


Grace Bound

by Castiel_For_King



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Biology (Supernatural), Angel Wings, Angelic Lore, Angels, Angst and Feels, Biblical Themes, Caring Dean, Caring Dean Winchester, Caring Sam, Caring Sam Winchester, Castiel ain't human, Castiel in the Bunker, Castiel is not ok, Castiel's True Form (Supernatural), Communication, Creature Castiel (Supernatural), Destiel - Freeform, Enochian-Speaking Castiel (Supernatural), Everyone is a little touch starved, Grace - Freeform, Happy Ending tho, Hurt/Comfort, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, PTSD Castiel, References to Military related trauma and conditioning, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slow Burn, Soldier Castiel, Team Free Will, Team Free Will uses their words, War Themes, wing fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-19 05:01:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22705498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castiel_For_King/pseuds/Castiel_For_King
Summary: Castiel is a seraph and a soldier. He doesn't know how to be anything else. But knowing Sam and Dean Winchester has changed him in ways no angel has been changed before.Not a human, not an angel.  All he knows is what he's not.  When an ancient Viking curse threatens to strip him of the free will he worked so hard for, Castiel has to re-learn what it means to be an angel, not just a Warrior of God.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 98
Kudos: 178





	1. Chapter 1

Castiel felt concrete crumble under his back and air rush from his lungs.

He fell to his knees, the impact of hitting the wall vibrating through his vessel so hard he felt his true form rattling around inside it like a marble in a tin can.

He spit an Enochian curse word, absolutely _sick_ of banishing sigils. If Anna were alive he’d kill her again for introducing them to humans.

As the daze from being tossed through the ether like a rag-doll subsided, flashes of memories returned to Castiel in a nauseating smear: saying goodbye to Dean, promising to look after Sam, and then promptly letting himself get banished by a woman pointing a gun at Sam’s face.

_Well done, Castiel_ , he sneered at himself. He planted his feet wide when a wave of dizziness threatened to topple him. He didn’t have _time_ to fall over.

Rage bubbled up inside him like magma, because _of course_. _Of course_. They could never catch a break. They were never allowed to catch their breath. 

Never.

Dean was gone – _dead_ – and the one task he’d asked of him, Castiel had already failed. It hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours. Had it even been ten? Five? He had no way of knowing, could not recall when he had said goodbye to the man he had pulled from Hell so few years ago. 

He wondered if his Father had known this was how things would turn out. He wondered at the irony of it. Castiel had left Hell with one Righteous Man and several less brothers and sisters and now Dean had _died_ to fix _God’s_ mistake.

Castiel wondered if, even at the very height of his blind faith and obedience, if he would have been able to make any sense of this.

But he was veering somewhat off track with these thoughts.

Gods, but he _hated_ how frazzled being banished left him.

He seethed. It had been a long time since he’d last felt such pure, holy, wrath coursing through him and Castiel lashed out at the innocent wall he’d been thrown against, slamming his fist into the fissure left from the impact and feeling satisfied when the concrete was obliterated, showering him with pebbles and dust. Inside the wall, he wrapped his fingers around the first thing he touched and ripped it back out, feeling the muscles in his whole body turn to steel as his grace infused every atom.

A large pipe bent and groaned when he pulled it from the wall like it was nothing more than copper wire.

It went sailing across the deserted parking lot, smashing against the ground with a deafening _clang,_ and water sprayed out of the ragged, gapping hole in the wall.

Castiel closed his eyes, feeling no better for the small amount of destruction he’d caused. If anything, his heart felt as if it might burst from his chest at any moment, gushing blood over the cold concrete just like water gushed from the broken pipe.

He hauled a breath through his nose with great effort, swallowed down the scream in his throat, and squeezed his eyes around the prickle of frustrated tears.

Just _once_ , could they catch a break? Just once could they be given a moment a reprieve? A moment to rest? A moment to _grieve_?

His cellphone vibrated against his leg and he nearly broke his fingers shoving his hand in to his pocket to pull it out. He jabbed the green button under the ‘ _Unknown Caller_ ’ and brought the phone to his ear, choosing to ignore the way his hands shook.

Angels – soldiers – were not allowed to shake. They were not allowed to crumble. _He_ was not allowed to come apart and lose control.

“Sam?!” He barked the name into his phone, biting down on his tongue until he could feel the pain of it and taste the blood. Used it to _focus_ and stop the tremble that was running through him like a rumbling volcano.

“ _Cas!”_

The air rushed from Castiel’s lungs again and for a long moment, he didn’t bother refilling them. All he could hear was the sound of pressurized water blasting out of the wall beside him, or maybe it was the sound of blood roaring between his ears. It was difficult to tell.

“ _Cas, you there?”_

He stared around then, trying to find some explanation. A witch in the trees or a demon in the gas station, mind strangely numb even though his chest ached and something deep inside him felt in danger of rupturing.

He felt a bit like a concrete pillar in an earthquake. He was strong, but with the earth constantly heaving violently under his feet, eventually he would crumble.

He spit a mouthful of blood onto the pavement.

“ _Cas?!”_

Though his eyes roamed the deserted area, there was no one. It was only him and the voice in his ear. 

He swallowed heavily, copper on his tongue, forcing the tremor running up his legs to just _stop it already_ before it brought him to his knees. He shoved grace into his muscle fibres and turned them to stone.

“…Dean?”

A harsh breath through the receiver. “ _Jesus Christ, Ca – ow! Ok, ok sorry…jeez_.”

Dean was talking to someone else, whoever he was with, but it hardly registered in Castiel’s sluggish brain. 

“You’re alive…you can’t be alive,” Castiel mumbled, blinked, swallowed and felt his legs shaking again already. “You can’t…”

“ _Yeah, Cas, I’m alive. It’s a long story but I’m on my way back to the bunker_.”

Castiel blinked and suddenly his brain was coming back on line, flickering to life like power returning to chunks of a city. This was a mission. This was something he could latch on to, something he could strengthen himself with against the earthquake.

He smeared the blood in his mouth against the inside of his cheek, forcing more of the copper tang against his taste buds.

Dean was alive. Dean was going to the bunker. Castiel was not there and they needed to find Sam.

_Yes_. A plan. A _mission_. 

Now he just needed orders and everything would fall in to place.

“I’m not there,” he said, because on some level he was sure that was important information for Dean to know.

Dean, who was alive and driving in the Impala as if he hadn’t been dead mere moments ago. Back to the bunker where Sam was not because Castiel had failed _again_.

His heart gave an aching beat. What _good_ was a soldier that could not follow orders?

Silence.

“ _What? What do you mean you’re not there, what the hell happened, I was gone for less than ten fuc – freaking hours!”_

“I…I was banished. By a woman. She was in the bunker waiting for us when we got back.” So late it was almost embarrassing, Castiel realized he needed to find out where the hell he was if he had any hope of getting back to help right the latest mistake he’d made and he straightened, shaking off the shock of hearing Dean’s voice and looking around for any clues that might tell him where he was.

Because Dean was alive and Sam was missing and Castiel was going to…do something about it. What, exactly, he’d figure out later. Step one was figuring out where he’d been banished to in the first place.

He was in a remote area, the gas station the only thing he could see in either direction down the single road in front of him. The tall fir trees all around kept him from seeing very far, so he turned back to the building, noting the little sign in the door that said ‘closed’.

Probably for the best, since he’d just ripped out half the wall in a fit of rage. Which now felt ridiculous given that Dean was alive and perfectly fine.

Speaking of, the man was prattling on in his ear and Castiel tried to pay attention as he walked to the doors and smashed the window in.

Beside him, a small lake was gathering in a dip in the time-ravaged parking lot. The water continued to rush out of the wall as if there was an unlimited supply of it.

_“What was that_?” Dean asked. He sounded alarmed.

And what a strange thing that was to hear, Castiel thought. What a strange, strange thing it was to hear alarm in Dean’s voice when Castiel had thought he was dead. 

Detached and faded, something like shock was seeping in to Castiel’s veins, pressing up against the metaphorical rebar he’d hammered through himself and corroding it.

“I’m at a gas station. I’m breaking in to find a map. I don’t know where I am.”

_“You think you’re still in the US?”_

“Definitely.”

_“Well you landed in Australia the last time.”_

“The last time I was banished I had my wings and was…not of sound mind. I vaguely remember flying for a while before I even remembered I’d been banished at all. By then I was in Perth.”

“ _Right_ …”

“I’m in Colorado.” Eyeing a rack of maps, he tried to remember where the hell they had all been when they said goodbye to Dean, but his mind was still refusing to fully cooperate. Looking down at the map he had just grabbed, he remembered it would be of little use if he didn’t know _where_ in Colorado he was.

“ _Shit, we’re in Kansas but we’re still an hour or two away from the Colorado border. You know where in Colorado?”_

Resisting the urge to snap back about the lack of _‘You Are Here’_ posters, Castiel moved behind the counter and started riffling through some paperwork. It took less then five seconds to find a piece of mail with the address on it.

“Apache City,” he read out loud.

Dean mumbled for him to hang on, told whoever was in the passenger seat to take the wheel for a second and then, presumably, googled the town on his phone. Castiel listened, honing in on the sounds of two people mumbling and moving around and belatedly realized that Dean had said ‘ _we_ are in Kansas’.

_We_? Who would Dean have in the car with him if Sam was gone and Castiel was in Colorado? He was just about to ask, something cold swelling behind his ribs without reason, when Dean’s voice, sharp and too loud, made Castiel flinch and forget what he’d even wanted to ask.

“ _Shit, you’re in the middle of freaking nowhere.”_

Right. Mission. _Focus, soldier_.

“I know that already.” 

“ _Alright, smart ass, start walking. There’s only one gas station near that town so that must be the one you’re at. Turn left down the road in front of you and you should find the highway in less than a half an hour. Head north on the highway and we’ll be coming at you from the other direction._ ”

Castiel sighed and did as he was told. “I miss my wings.” _Missing them won’t bring them back._

_Focus! Soldier!_

Dean’s voice softened, “ _I know. Be careful Cas, I’m on my way_.”

* * *

It had rained in Apache City the night before and the long grass on the side of the highway was wet. It whipped at his legs as he walked, soaking the thin fabric within minutes. The air was still and heavy with the passing of a storm and a grey canopy over his head told Castiel that the sun would not manage to struggle through today. 

He didn’t mind. The overcast sky felt a bit like a heavy blanket and the tremble in his nerves seemed to calm a little under the comforting weight of the dreary weather.

It was lucky his grace was strong enough now that he didn’t need to eat or sleep. Though even so, he felt tired. Actually, if he was being honest with himself, he was exhausted, which didn’t make any sense at all. He had his grace, mangled though it felt. Dean was alive. Sam was missing but…they would find him. They _would_. He would not allow Dean to narrowly escape death _again_ just to come back and find out that Castiel had let him down. _Again_. 

All in all, things were far better than Castiel had been expecting, but his feet and legs still ached with every step and his head still felt like it was full of sand. His throat stung with dryness and the weight of something intangible threatened to pull him down so hard he worried it might flip him inside out. It made it difficult to turn down the three people that had pulled over on the side of the highway to offer him a ride as far as they were going. He thanked them for their kindness but insisted that he was fine. He didn’t want to risk driving right by Dean going the other way.

They had all been confused, as most people were when they tried to talk to him, taking in his smart suit and the lack of perspiration on his brow, and let him be with nothing more than a bemused smile and a “Well, if you’re sure.”

Castiel had just managed to let himself sink in to the familiar and mind-numbing trance of a long and steady march on aching legs when the sound of the Impala roaring in the distance caught his ear. He heard it before any human would and smiled – a pitiful twitch of his lips – knowing the sound of that car more than an angel should. He crossed the two lanes and trudged through the soggy median and across the other two lanes just as the Impala came over a gentle hill in the road.

The tires squealed and gravel sprayed in a shower as Dean pulled over and the hunter was out of the car before it had even come to a full stop, grin splitting his face as he barrelled in to Castiel and tried his best to crush him in a hug.

“Man, it’s good to see you,” Dean muttered against his shoulder.

“And you, considering I never thought I would again.” Castiel had to remind himself not to hug the fragile human back as hard as he wanted and pulled away sooner than he’d have liked to. Dean was warm and solid and _real_ ; he felt like something Castiel could hold on to while everything shook and splintered around him.

He made himself step back. His legs were shaking again. “Dean, what about Sam –”

“Sam’s fine,” Dean quickly explained, still smiling, still with both hands on Castiel’s shoulders. “I got a hold of him two hours ago. He’s fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”

It didn’t sound real and Castiel struggled to understand. Three times he opened and closed his mouth without saying anything, hearing gravel crunch under his boots, hearing the woosh of cars speeding by, feeling the moisture of another storm building in the air – and understanding none of it.

Fine meant…well it meant _fine_. It meant no mission. It meant he had nothing to focus on. It meant…he wasn’t sure what the entirety of _fine_ encompassed but he was quite sure that it was not, ironically, anything good. Not for him.

“Cas?” 

It wasn’t the first time Dean had called his name.

Castiel let his eyes snap sideways, to where he could make out the back of a blond head of hair in the passenger seat.

“Who is that?” he asked, because he figured he was supposed to, redundant though it seemed – obviously if Dean trusted her she was probably alright.

Dean’s eyes narrowed and flicked this way and that over his face, making Castiel wonder what the hunter was looking for. But then his expression cleared and a small and achingly tentative smile curled the corner of his lips, moving freckles around his face.

“It’s my mom,” Dean nearly whispered. There was incredulity in his voice and something close to awe.

Castiel blinked, once again trying to will his brain to start processing the information coming at him. But it felt like throwing rocks at a castle wall.

Why was he on the outside of his own mind? And why did something like this – something that should be like a wrecking ball to that castle wall – feel like a pebble? Dean’s _mother_ was sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala and Castiel _knew_ that was bigger than it felt.

What was _wrong_ with him?

Dean’s hand settling on his shoulder might as well have been a cattle prod and Castiel jerked back into the foreground, his gaze quickly snapping back to Dean. He looked worried again, all reverence for his mother replaced by the much more familiar worry lines around his troubled green eyes.

Dean’s other hand came to rest on the side of his face and Castiel stared blankly, nonplused, as Dean’s thumb slid under his chin, gently urging him to look up a little more.

“Look at me,” Dean asked, his voice uncharacteristically gentle.

Castiel nearly pointed out that he already was, but then he realized it wasn’t his vessel’s eyes he was watching Dean with.

He made his human eyes rise to Dean’s. “What are you doing?”

“You just need some rest, that’s all,” Dean told him, as if that answered his question. As if he had _asked_ a question.

The short conversation was doing nothing to help ease the disconnected and misaligned feeling Castiel was struggling to understand. He felt like he was missing whole chunks of understanding; even though he frequently had a hard time reading between the lines that Dean spoke, this was something altogether different.

Why couldn’t he _think_ properly?

Perhaps that banishing sigil had hit him harder than he thought. He poked at his grace. It stabbed back.

Dean was pushing him by the shoulder, steering him towards the car. Where his mother was waiting.

She stared at Castiel through the window, offering a small, tentative smile under dazed blue eyes. He supposed being dead for thirty years and then suddenly not _would_ be a bit jarring.

“Cas.”

He looked over. With his human face. _Tedious_.

Dean was holding the back door open, gesturing for him to sit in the seat behind his mother.

“Come on, buddy, get in.”

The leather gave under his weight and Castiel sunk gratefully in to it, feeling as if his bones had suddenly turned to lead now that he’d finally stopped moving for a second. 

Dean was pushing at his shoulder again and Castiel glared without managing to turn his head and aim it at Dean.

“Lay down, Cas.”

What for? Castiel wanted to ask. There were things to be done and sitting up would be much better to do them. He needed to be debriefed, first of all. 

Dean’s _mother_ was sitting in the passenger seat. 

Dean was _alive_. 

Things were _fine_. 

An explanation was in order.

“Cas…Cas, lay down, it’s ok. Just lay down.”

But _why_ , though? He realized then that he didn’t care. Dean was still pushing against his shoulder, his gentle touch much more irritating than the hunter likely intended. So he gave in, he laid down across the back seat, and curled his arms around the leather jacket that appeared under his head.

* * *

_The searing agony of pointed screws burrowing into his brain._

_Iron shackles biting into his wrists._

_The burn of his own blade sinking through his shoulder and into his grace._

Castiel scrambled away, his chest seizing and eyes snapping open. Dean was in front of him, his hand hovering in the air between them as if frozen in time, and the hard bulges of the door were digging hard into Castiel’s back.

“You’re ok, Cas,” Dean assured him. He spoke so softly. So un-Dean like. “We’re home, we just…here, let me help you.”

Castiel flinched away from Dean’s hand without knowing why, grace flaring behind his ribs and crackling along his finger tips like faulty wires. Twisting to grab the handle, he shouldered the door open, smothering the urge to lash out like a trapped animal.

Outside, the crisp fresh air felt too thick to make it down his constricted throat, but that didn’t stop Castiel’s lungs from trying to suck as much of it down as they could.

For a moment he let himself mourn the days where he could tell his vessel to do something and it would obey. He could shut emotions off as easy as flicking a switch. He could push muscle and bone and blood beyond their natural capacity. He could rip his own arm off and beat someone with it if he’d felt compelled.

Now…now he rested his elbows on the roof of the car and threaded his fingers into his hair, trying to slow his breathing, noticing for the first time the coldness that was spreading through his gut and the tight feeling in his chest – like there was a thick rubber band around his rib cage.

“Cas…”

A gentle breeze carried Dean’s voice and the hunter sounded hesitant in the vast darkness behind Castiel’s eyelids.

He clung to the sound of the breeze moving through the tall trees around him, listened to the gentle rustle of leaves and the creaking of the thick trunks as they swayed. Timing his breathing to the sound of the wind helped his heart and his mind to slow down as well and, after a few moments, Castiel no longer felt as if he was in danger of splitting at the seams. His grace sputtered and hissed one last time before he finally felt calm enough to pull it back in and he took one last, deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said before he’d even opened his eyes, sounding like a broken record even to himself.

Sorry I couldn’t protect Sam. Sorry I couldn’t fight off Rowena’s spell. Sorry I nearly beat you to death. Sorry you had to come get me because I wasn’t paying attention and got banished. Sorry I couldn’t tell you apart from a nightmare. Sorry I can’t seem to do anything right.

_Sorry, sorry, sorry…_

“It’s ok,” and the careful, gentle way Dean spoke was like a nail through Castiel’s heart. He very narrowly stopped himself from clutching his chest, once again left wondering _why_.

Why did he feel as if he was on the verge of collapsing in on himself like a dying star? He’d died before on the end of his own blade. This felt disturbingly similar, but no matter how many times he rubbed his hand across his chest, he found no wounds.

This was human. This was emotion.

This was _bullshit_.

Dean was talking to him again, being so careful in the way he moved and spoke that Castiel found it unnerving. He inched away, feeling infinitely guilty for it even as he did so. It didn’t help when Dean looked as if he’d been punched in the gut, his hand outstretched into the air between them as Castiel back away.

Clenching his jaw so hard Castiel could see the muscle jump, Dean let his hand drop.

Castiel’s throat tightened ominously.

“I’m sorry…I’m just – I’m just tired.” It was a weak excuse but it was the only one he had.

“I know,” Dean told him. The gravel under his worn boots crunched loudly when he shifted his feet. “Come on, let’s get inside and you can get some sleep, ok? You can sleep as long as you want, I promise.” He tried to smile, but it looked more like he urgently needed the washroom instead.

It wasn’t what Castiel had meant by ‘tired’ but he chose not to correct the man. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t _need_ to sleep. He probably _couldn’t_ even if he tried. Which was probably for the best, he thought, following Dean through the heavy metal door to the bunker. He remembered what sleep was like from when he was human. As if willingly falling unconscious wasn’t terrifying enough, his brain had, most confusingly, seemed ready and primed to make his sleep as horrifying and unrestful as possible. 

No. He would not sleep. It wouldn’t do anything other than leave him vulnerable, and he’d been feeling enough of that as it was lately without subjecting himself to more of it.

At the bottom of the iron staircase, Sam was standing before his mother, both of them dancing without moving. Unsaid words hung between them like the delicate bubbles he’d seen children at parks playing with and there was a palpable air of something charged and electric in the war room.

It took him longer than it should have to realise Sam’s arm was in a sling.

Right. He’d been shot.

“You’re hurt,” he needlessly declared.

He was already raising his hand, grace sputtering along his frayed nerve endings.

Dean’s hand clamped around his wrist and his arm was pushed back down and then he was quickly shoved in the direction of the dorms.

“Dean?” Why wouldn’t Dean let him heal Sam? It was one of the few things he could still do. And after all, it was his fault Sam was even in need of healing. If he’d only been more careful, if he’d only stayed more aware of his surroundings instead of selfishly allowing himself to grieve Dean’s death so thoroughly –

“You need to rest, Cas, not use up your grace healing some scratch.” The hands on his shoulders eased their grip a little.

“I’m not…I don’t need – Dean, I’m _fine_ ,” the words didn’t snap as much as he thought they would, given how irritated and on edge he felt.

Dean spun him around right there in the middle of the hall, settling both hands on Castiel’s shoulders and holding him in place. When he stared at Castiel, Castiel thought Dean’s eyes looked a bit more dull than normal, the green faded from its usual vibrancy. But when he moved all of his eyes around, he rather thought that could be said for everything around him. Had the old lead paint on the walls always been so…grey looking?

“Cas, you are _not_ ok and I really need you to take off your coat, change into the pj’s I’m gonna give you and _sleep_. Can you do that for me?”

He felt his mouth open but halted the words for a moment. He could not promise Dean that he would sleep, because he wouldn’t. It became obvious then, as he read the eager yet strained expression on the man’s face, that he probably wanted to go spend time with his newly resurrected mother.

Heat pushed in to Castiel’s face and he took a step back, letting Dean’s hands slip from his shoulders.

Of course the brothers would want to spend time with their mother. Of course they would. And they wouldn’t want _him_ intruding on such a private family reunion. 

“Ok,” he quietly agreed. He could give Sam and Dean this time alone. He would pretend to sleep and stay out of the way like they needed. It was the least he could do after all the trouble he had caused.

Suddenly he was simply grateful they were letting him stay at all. He wondered how long he had before they would grow tired of his presence once more. Perhaps it would be best if he left before they felt the need to ask him to. It wouldn’t be so bad this time, he reasoned even as his heart squeezed itself dry. He wasn’t human, he had his grace – and his mind – back. He only needed enough time to heal a bit more. Just a few days, maybe a week, to smooth down the raw and jagged edges from where Lucifer had been ripped from him and from where Rowena’s curse had dug its claws in deep.

When they reached the room he was to stay in, Castiel wasted no time shrugging out of his coat and tossing it over the foot of the bed. Reaching for his tie he looked up in time to catch Dean staring at him with a deep frown before the hunter cleared his throat and left the room, mumbling that he’d be back in a minute.

Castiel felt like he was stripping off layers of armor rather than clothing. By the time he had tossed his suit jacket and tie on top of his trench, his fingers were shaking too badly to properly manage the tiny buttons on his shirt.

‘ _You’re being ridiculous_ ,’ he told himself. It was just a shirt. It was made of cotton, not chain-mail. It would do nothing to impede the point of a blade. He was no safer with it on than off.

“Here you go.”

Castiel flinched at the sudden sound of Dean’s voice, ripping the top two buttons right off and blinking as they pinged against the floor. Heat pushed in to his face again.

“Sorry,” Dean nearly whispered, hands clenching around the flannel pyjama bottoms he was holding.

Shame, Castiel remembered, was a disgusting feeling, and his lip curled around the sour taste of it, his gut swooping. Frustrated, he tugged on either side of his shirt, feeling a tiny amount of satisfaction when the rest of the buttons pinged off the floor.

He tossed the shirt on his pile of clothes and turned to Dean with his hand outstretched. But Dean was staring at him, his dull green eyes wide and worried.

Irritation smeared itself across the heat of shame in his chest and Castiel snapped. “You want me to change, right?”

As soon as he said it he realized it sounded strange. The kind of thing that would make Dean sputter and make some kind of joke before quickly leaving the room.

“I…” Dean swallowed. “I just want you to be comfortable. You look…” he cleared his throat like he was gargling rocks. “Here, just…”

Castiel took the proffered clothing and watched Dean’s back until he was out of the room and his footsteps had faded down the hall. Back towards where his mother and brother were waiting. Only then, when he was sure he was alone, did Castiel close the door and jam the desk chair under the handle.


	2. Chapter 2

_Lucifer twisted his grace, crushing it like tendons against bone, and Castiel groaned. He was trapped, being punished for clawing free to save Sam from his demented brother. He didn’t regret it, only wished that Lucifer would show him mercy and kill him already._

_But no, the agony of Lucifer’s wrath went on and on and_ on _._

_“Please,” Castiel begged. “Kill me, brother, please!”_

_Lucifer burned so bright and fierce that even Castiel had to close all of his eyes. Calling him a star did not do him justice, and Castiel felt himself burning in the light of his sibling’s Holy power._

_Castiel had not been made with the ability to fight against an archangel’s will, only to bend to it._

_Something pulled deep inside him, like a hook digging into a pig carcass, and_ pulled _._

_He screamed._

“ _Castiel!_ ”

His eyes flew open and his heart crammed itself into his throat. Gasping for air, Castiel wrenched himself free of the hands holding him and hit the floor, crowding back against the nearest wall.

Echoes of pain stabbed through him, stealing the breath from his lungs and making him choke. He could feel Lucifer’s tainted light glaring through the cracks in his body, could feel his brother curling around him like a snake and crushing, crushing, _crushing_ –

Struggling to suck air down his throat, Castiel snarled, suddenly angry. 

_Just kill me…kill me, kill me…_

_Please…_

He struggled for control, feeling his grace trying to fight back. It crackled along his synapses and sparked from his fingertips, eager to fight and claw and bite. His grace – his _true_ self – wanted to reclaim something. It wanted to take _back_. And the urge to just _let himself_ was overwhelming.

He lashed out; let a razor-sharp tendril of grace whip around him like flaming barbed-wire, snarling from where he was crouched in the corner of his fractured mind. If he wasn’t going to be granted the mercy of death then he would make Lucifer regret not snuffing him out when he had the chance.

If Lucifer wanted to treat him like an animal then Castiel would not disappoint. He scrounged up every scrap of angelic savagery that had led him to victory on countless battlefields and gathered it close, pressing it down until it was ready to spring like a grenade and obliterate anything unfortunate enough to be too close.

There was a reason he’d won so many battles. There was a reason he kept getting back up every time he was cut down. He was a weapon of incomprehensible destruction. His Father had created him to destroy and he was going to destroy Lucifer or obliterate himself trying.

“ _Cas, please…”_

He froze.

Lucifer did not whisper. Lucifer did not beg. 

Slowly, amid the maelstrom of grace and rage, he opened his eyes.

His grace spun around him like a tornado, forming a shield of light that was scraping the paint from the walls. Through the ribbons of blue and white and searing heat enveloping him he could see two figures crouching not far away. Arms flung up to shield their eyes.

 _Sam and Dean_.

He was in the bunker.

Lucifer was dead.

The realization would have put him on his knees if he hadn’t already been crouching against the wall like a frightened, savage beast. Even after realizing the danger he was putting them in, Castiel was finding it alarmingly difficult to stop. 

He’d been in a car accident before, remembered how the driver had frantically stomped the break pedal against the floor, but it had been too little too late.

“I can’t,” he warned them, trying to sound much calmer than he was. But his angelic voice betrayed him, banging against the walls like a ship smashing in to an iceberg and making the brothers fold in on themselves even tighter.

They cowered before him. Like humans were supposed to when an angel was threatening to annihilate them.

A cry pried itself from his throat. Not of panic, or of rage, but of despair. All-consuming and absolute. He was as out of control as he felt and he was going to kill these poor humans that he had tried so hard for so long to keep safe. And now, after everything, he was going to destroy them himself.

The sound of his cry shattered the lights and sent cracks snaking up through the concrete walls.

He tried to tell them he was sorry, but he couldn’t breathe. He had pulled up every ounce of power for a last stand against an enemy that wasn’t even real anymore and now he was going to bring about the ruin of everything he’d been trying to protect. Everything he’d fallen for. Everything he’d died for.

Castiel could not tell if it was the light of his own grace or the darkness of his blind panic that was filling his vision as power crackled along his every limb and through his every bone, gathering in a crescendo of flame and light.

He wanted to tell them to run, but when he opened his mouth, light so blinding and bright it _sang_ poured forth.

Then everything, inexplicably, impossibly... _stopped_.

As jarring as what he might imagine getting hit with a comet might feel like, Castiel’s grace was shoved back down in to the core of his true being so violently that it ripped a scream from his throat and he felt his back collide with the wall.

He collapsed to the floor, could feel his whole body convulsing from the tips of his fingers all the way to his toes as his grace seethed and clawed at his insides. He tried not to fight the agony of it, but that was as easy as trying not to pull free of a snare. And so he struggled with all the panic of an animal with a wire around it’s neck as his grace was roughly – barbarically – bound. 

The seizure rolled through him and he let it. It was no less than he deserved.

After what felt like years, Castiel finally realized the seizure had passed, his chest heaved with ragged breaths, and deep, deep, down inside him he could feel his grace, so primitively but effectively bound. 

It _hurt_. Like someone had wrapped him up in red-hot barbed wire. It was not unlike the squeeze of Lucifer’s grace.

He gagged around the constriction – the searing _pain_ – of it.

Why _hadn’t_ Lucifer just killed him? 

“ _Let me go_ ,” he moaned, clawing at his chest, as if he could somehow reach the binding through his vessel’s body. But then there were hands pulling at his arms, prying his bloody hands away from his skin and pinning them against the floor.

He’d forgotten about the brothers.

“I’m sorry,” Dean was panting, sucking air into his lungs like he’d spent the last hour sprinting up a hill. He struggled to hold Castiel down. “God, I’m so fucking sorry, Cas.”

Castiel sobbed, writhing on the floor just as his grace writhed inside him. The longer he was bound, the tighter it seemed to crush him down and Castiel felt panic stabbing at his insides. Why wouldn’t they release him? His grace had been subdued, he wouldn’t be able to reach it for hours now, if not longer.

“ _Let me go,_ ” he begged, “Please… _please, Dean_ , let me go, I’ll stop, I’ll control it please, let me go, _let me go!_ ”

The palm of Dean’s hand was warm against his face but Castiel barely noticed it, all his awareness focused inward. He tried to pry his hands out of Sam’s grip – he could get through his vessel, he _knew_ he could, he just needed to try harder. He could reach his grace and set it free himself. He was _sure_ of it.

He was at least sure he had to try _something_. _Anything_.

But Sam threw his weight on to each of Castiel’s wrists and, with his power locked away, he could not hope to overpower the man.

“Please…Dean _please_ …Sam, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ …”

He was going to pass out. He could feel the familiar sensation of darkness pressing in on him from all sides and he eagerly awaited it. Anything. Anything but this.

Dean’s hand was still on his face, his calloused thumb stroking back and forth.

“ _Let me go…let me go!”_

“We’re _trying_ Cas…hang on…we’re trying…stay with me…”

But unconsciousness came for him and Castiel rushed to greet it like a dog welcoming his master home.

* * *

His return to consciousness was like an electric shock. 

He gasped, horrified to realize his grace was _still_ tightly bound…but, he probed around the throbbing power, noticed that the edges of whatever magic was binding him had become less harsh, less jagged. It didn’t cut as deep; didn’t burn as much.

He sucked in a lungful of air. And then another.

He was lying on his bed – he’d been out for a while then, if someone had had time to move him off the floor – curled on his side, and could feel the cold bunker air on his sweaty skin.

He shivered.

When a hand settled gently over his, Castiel’s frayed nerves and adrenaline-soaked system nearly propelled him straight off the bed.

“It’s ok! You’re ok, Cas! You’re ok,” Dean’s face was close to his, the hunter was kneeling on the floor beside his bed, both hands now gripping Cas’ hard. “Just breathe…breathe…”

Castiel did as he was told, feeling his grace spitting and writhing in its bonds.

“It hurts,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut around the pain. 

“I know,” Dean’s hands squeezed his, words coming in a rush, like he’d been waiting to say them all at once as soon as Castiel was able to hear them. “I’m so fucking sorry, Cas. We had to do something…you were about to go freaking nuclear on us…and, so I just…I just _said_ the words for the binding. We didn’t know it would do… _this_. I didn’t _know_.”

Castiel was having a hard time following Dean’s words as they flew by him but he could plainly hear the pain in the man’s voice and the urgency with which he needed Castiel to hear him. 

He hauled a shuddering breath into his lungs.

Even now, even as battered and mauled as he was, Castiel felt that pang in his chest, that _need_ to make it better. To make Dean feel _better_.

“I’m sorry, Dean…I lost control…I know – ” he gasped around a small seizure of power trying, and failing, to break free, “I know you had no choice,” he swallowed down a wave of nausea, hating that he could feel it at all, “but I’m not a danger anymore I – I promise, please,” he felt tears slip from under his closed eyelids, barely swallowed another retch around a wave of pain. “ _Please_ , let me go.”

_Begging now, Castiel? Gods, you’re pathetic._

“God, Cas, _fuck_.” Dean pressed his forehead to the tangle of their hands and his fingers trembled as they squeezed around the angel’s so hard that his knuckles were white. “We don’t know _how_ , the release spell didn’t _work_. We’re trying to find…we’re _trying_. But nothing seems to be working. We, uh, we dosed you with some heavy-duty pain killers, did they help? At all?”

It was impossible to care that he’d been drugged against his will at the moment. If that was the reason he was able to talk through the pain, Castiel was grateful. He would do anything at all if it would blunt his senses.

He jerked his head in a single nod and shamelessly asked for more.

“Yeah…yeah, hang on.”

Dean, and his solid warmth, were suddenly gone, and Castiel peeled his eyes open to see the hunter fiddling with something on the nightstand. Dean’s hands shook as he raised a small clear vial into the air, checking the level of the liquid inside before producing a syringe from somewhere and drawing liquid into the needle.

“Your hands are shaking,” Castiel observed, his laboured breathing somewhat under control now.

Dean glanced down at him, his face drawn and pale in the light of the small desk lamp. “Your whole body is shaking, so I’m doin’ better than you,” he countered gruffly.

It took the man pointing it out for Castiel to become aware of it. He _was_ shaking, rather hard. He couldn’t stop it even when he tried, though he didn’t try for long. His stupid vessel didn’t do anything it was told lately.

Dean pulled a nearby chair to his bedside and reached out, gently wrapping his fingers around Castiel’s wrist and carefully pulling his arm away from where it was tucked against the angel’s body.

Castiel looked down, unable to summon the energy to even move his own arm to assist Dean. Whatever that spell had been, it seemed to have completely incapacitated him.

He frowned, noticing the small pinpricks in the crook of his elbow. There were seven of them.

Dean held the needle up and flicked it a few times to get rid of the air bubbles. 

Castiel had seen Dean vomit on a number of occasions and the look on the hunter’s face now was indicative of it.

“How long have I been unconscious?” Castiel asked. He knew he was the reason behind that nauseated look on Dean’s face and didn’t want to dwell on it. He had other, somewhat more pressing matters on which to dwell.

Dean glanced at him again, bringing the needle to the crook in Castiel’s arm, his hands suddenly steady.

“Four days.”

With the pain that was radiating from deep inside him, Castiel could not even feel the pinprick in his arm. But he did feel it when Dean pressed down on the plunger and warmth spread efficiently from the injection site and through his entire body.

The shaking subsided into a fine tremble, and his grace calmed. He let his eyes slide shut. It was far from painless, but the drug had effectively taken the edge off. He could at least breathe again.

The next time he opened his eyes, Dean was gone. When his gaze finally focused, Castiel eyed the small glass bottle on the night stand.

 _Etorphine_ , it said on the label. He wondered what that was. It worked quite well. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the implications of a human drug working so effectively on him but he felt better now than when Dean had first given it to him; as if the drug had settled into him more solidly.

He wondered how much time had passed between then and now. Time was such a slippery bastard on a good day, he told himself he should not bother trying to track it when he was bound and drugged.

He frowned, trying to remember _why_ he was bound and drugged. Something had happened. Or something had almost happened. He’d almost done something…bad.

He nearly laughed; that didn’t help him narrow anything down. He’d done and almost done a lot of bad things. Which one of them was this?

He swallowed heavily, the drugs in his blood making his head slow. 

He’d almost done something bad and Dean and Sam had had to…

Dread bloomed in his stomach. Sam and Dean had bound him. But they’d _had_ to. He’d almost hurt them. Possibly almost killed them.

Definitely almost killed them.

His grace throbbed.

He was so broken he doubted even Naomi would be able to fix him, but for the first time, he found himself wishing she was still alive. He’d have gotten in her chair willingly this time, if it meant she might be able to glue some one his pieces back together. What good was he to anyone now? He was chained, subdued, and useless, stuffed in a concrete box under the ground.

_How pitiful._

Although, if the universe refused to let him die, he supposed this was the next best solution. At the very least, if he was incapable of leaving this bed, then he could do no more harm.

For a while Castiel laid there, unable to do much else. But the less slippery time got, the more agitated his grace became. He fought against the bonds even though he knew it would only hurt more if he did. Like a rabbit in a snare, he was only making it worse by struggling.

He knew this, so why couldn’t he _stop_?

Panic inched its way back into his awareness, his body curling into the fetal position as the pain of his bonds burned through the medication numbing his nerves.

He couldn’t help but think of Naomi again. She used to bind him like this when he was being ‘difficult’, as she put it. But it had been hard, seeing that drill coming towards his eye. Instinct _made_ him struggle. He liked to think it would make anyone struggle, no matter their rank.

At least her binding had been strong and clean. Not like… _this_. This jagged, dirty, primitive, monstrosity of a spell.

The bonds squeezed out of nowhere, as if they could hear him, choking him with the suddenness of it.

There was a way to calm those bonds but he couldn’t remember what it was. Something he could use. Dean had shown him. Or Dean had given it to him? Regardless, Dean had been involved in easing the pain.

He wondered if he should call for the man.

Why couldn’t he _think_?

The bonds squeezed again, wringing a groan from his chest like water from a cloth. The pressure was becoming unbearable again. He felt like he was being crushed. He needed to release it.

Then, suddenly, it occurred to him.

His blade. 

He peeled his eyes open. The room was dark, the bedside lamp had been turned off, but he didn’t need to be able to see to manifest his blade into his hand. That blade was a part of him, after all; forged from a shard of one of his claws and a peice of his grace, back when he'd had plenty to spare. With effort, Castiel pushed aside the growing pain of his bindings and slid his arm from where he’d had it held with the other against his chest.

When his fingers first wrapped around the cool handle, his grace spiked furiously, trying to complete the connection to his blade like a starving dog trying to reach a bone through the bars of its cage. It very nearly ripped a scream from him, but he bit his tongue hard, tasting blood, to keep the noise inside.

He mustn’t make noise. Then Dean would come and he would not approve of Castiel’s plan – he often didn’t – and would surely try to stop him. But Dean did not have grace, or wings. Dean was not an angel that could be bound. He would not understand and what humans do not understand, they fear.

He hugged his blade to his chest for a moment, just breathing, trying to settle his mind in the hopes that maybe he wouldn’t have to do this at all if he could just _think_ of another way out.

But no. The crushing strength of his bonds wouldn’t relent and he couldn’t take it anymore.

He lifted his arm over his shoulder and blindly positioned the point of the blade over his fourth rib, right next to his spine. He’d hoped the pain of his grace being strangled might distract from the pain of the incision he was making.

Alas, he grit his teeth as he dragged the blade upward, cutting himself open from ribs to shoulder blade.

When he was done and he could feel hot blood streaming down and soaking into the mattress, Castiel only barely managed to roll on to his other side and repeat the process on his right.

The blade was slippery and it slid from his lax fingers, clattering to the floor. This was messy, but not as messy as it would have been without the incisions.

Castiel took a few steadying breathes, his bloody fingers curling in the sheet to brace himself, and then purposefully reached into the ether and pulled his wings over.

* * *

Art by [Ella Brennan](https://www.instagram.com/ellabrennanbutler/v)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feed your writers and leave a comment :D


	3. Chapter 3

Castiel could breathe again. 

He rolled on to his stomach and flexed his wings gently and slowly. This was the first time he had manifested his wings in a human vessel since…well since Biblical times. And then they had been whole and he had been healthy. 

He moved carefully, feeling for the differences between then and now. 

Miracle of miracles, he felt no pain from them. Evidently, they had deteriorated to the point where there was no feeling left in them. Or else they had healed over with scar tissue.

He couldn’t bare to look over his shoulder and check which it was. Either way, they were no longer wings, but at least they didn’t hurt anymore.

A bitter laugh punched from his chest. 

Oh, how far had he fallen to think dead wings were a blessing?

That was a question best left for a time when he was feeling less homicidal, he decided, and instead he focused on the fact that his idea had actually worked.

 _That’s two miracles in two minutes_ , his inner dialogue sneered.

After the fall, Castiel had purposely severed his wings from the rest of his being as completely as he could without actually cutting them off. It was the only way he’d managed to survive; the only way he was able to take one step after the other until he found his way back to Sam and Dean.

He couldn’t feel them; couldn’t see them; couldn’t even think about them, or the grief would have paralyzed him. He’d caught a glimpse of them, when he first woke on that forest floor and had looked back to see the exposed bones and hanging, featherless, flesh and he had retched into the dead leaves under his feet.

The pain had been…insidious. Like that time he’d been shot with a bullet made from an angel blade. He’d been hit with the feeling of knowing _something_ was terribly wrong…but not knowing what. And then, as soon as he laid eyes on the source of the wrongness, the pain had brought him to his knees.

Physically, it may have been the worst pain he could remember – not even Naomi drilling in to his mind and ripping out parts of it had been quite as bad as his wings burning up in the fall. 

But it was the mental anguish of seeing his once magnificent, battle-scared, _beautiful_ wings shredded, bleeding and broken that had ruined him. It was knowing that _every single one_ of his brothers and sisters were experiencing the same horror, the same despair, the same agony…and it was all his fault.

For an angel to lose its wings was an incomprehensible loss; impossible to describe, even in their flowery language.

With practised effort, Castiel wrenched his mind free of the claws of that particularly horrific memory. It was one he often wished he could forget but most often found himself getting lost in. He’d almost gotten used to not having his wings. Almost. As if an angel could ever become used to such an unnatural thing.

He refocused, pushing the echo of that harrowing loss deep down and out of the way where it belonged.

His grace was still tightly, _savagely_ , bound…but not all of it. He could feel a filament of it sneaking through to his wings; like a prisoner holding the hand of a visiting loved one through the bars of their cell. There was a connection, an escape, into the place outside the bonds and it seemed to be working like a drain, relieving the pressure enough so that Castiel could at least _think_ somewhat more clearly.

For a while Castiel just lay there, shifting the meager amount of grace in his wings to heal the incisions he had made in his back to connect them to his vessel. He slowly, tediously, knit the skin together just enough to stop the bleeding, fusing it to the scarred skin at the base of his wings until his vessel and his wings were one entity. There was barely enough grace stored in his wings to do it, and it felt like it took hours and hours just to stop the bleeding and heal just a single layer of skin. But he managed it.

At the end of it, he was exhausted, but he refused to close his eyes, trying to piece together his memories from the past couple days and make some kind of sense of them.

He mostly remembered pain. Then remembered someone pushing a needle into his arm. 

He frowned and tried to push backwards in time. 

Dean. Dean had held that needle. Dean had drugged him to help with the pain.

Sam and Dean had been the ones to bind him.

Betrayal and confusion reared against the inside of his ribs. Why would they have done _this_ to him? 

He felt sick. They _must_ have had a good reason, he only had to remember it. Subconsciously, he curled his wings around his shoulders – a small comfort – and indulged himself in the memory of what it used to feel like being in the safety of his wings. How his feathers used to feel slipping and sliding against each other. How warm it was. How comforting it was. He could almost convince himself he could feel it again.

Castiel closed his eyes and tried to focus.

He remembered Dean being dead. Then Dean suddenly _not_ being dead. He remembered feeling strange, disconnected, confused – no real ground gained there, he thought ruefully; he often felt that way.

He’d seen Lucifer…no, he’d had a _nightmare_ about Lucifer and…ah yes. He’d almost turned the bunker in to a smoking crater because of it.

They’d had no choice. He would have killed them all. 

But he couldn’t help but think that killing him would have been better than _this_.

The sheets under him were stiff with dried blood.

He wondered how many days it had been now. He couldn’t see the ticks on his arm in the dark, but he certainly did not have the strength to turn on the light.

He was so tired. His graced throbbed like a sore thumb. Castiel closed his eyes and slept.

* * *

“ _SAM!_ ”

Castiel woke violently, the sound of someone screaming nearby propelling him from his bed with an energy he hadn’t felt in days. Dimly, he realised that for all the time he spent telling himself he wasn’t going to sleep he sure was doing a lot of it, and each time he woke he was reminded of why he shouldn’t have.

He stumbled back into the nearest corner like a drunk, legs feeling like lead and wings reflexively spreading for balance. But they hit the walls and he pitched sideways – somewhat ungracefully – his center of gravity far from where he was used to it being, and crumbled to the floor in the corner of his bedroom.

 _Trapped in another box_ , his mind reminded him mercilessly. He tried not to panic at the realization. It was the bunker. If any box was safe, it was this one.

Nestled as he was in the corner, he pressed the bony joints of his wings against the walls anyway, as if he could just push them away and make more space.

Of course, it didn’t work, so he settled on willing the room to stop spinning through sheer force of will.

He barely managed it, but counted it as a victory none the less.

More noise. Always there was noise around Sam and Dean. 

Frantically, he sought of the source of it, finding Dean standing on the other side of the bed with a stricken, _horrified_ expression on his face.

Ah yes. His hideous deformity. Castiel had not considered, in his desperation to free his wings and relieve the pressure of his bonds, that Sam and Dean would _see_ them in all their mangled glory.

As if angry about the reminder of his predicament and the shame protruding from his back, his grace hissed and bucked, pushing against the bonds that only squeezed tighter in response, and Castiel doubled over, breathless. He braced his left wing against the wall and his right against the floor, bringing both hands up to press against his sternum, trying to breathe.

“ _SAM!_ ” Dean screamed again, voice raw and ragged like a saw cutting through an oak knot. His green eyes were wide, panicked, and glued to Castiel as if he wasn't entirely convinced that it was Castiel at all. 

Dean’s stance was wide, his muscles coiled solid under his tshirt, fingers spread and twitching like they wanted to grab a weapon. It was his _I’m ready to fight_ stance and Castiel felt a small quiver of something quite like fear slither between his heaving ribs.

Castiel was _very_ aware of his wings. Very aware of how vulnerable he was with them out and his grace bound. Why had he thought manifesting them would be a good idea, he must look horrible to the poor human. 

Like a monster.

Sam came charging into the room with a shotgun in his hand and a wild look in his eye - given the absolute panic in Dean's voice, he likely thought his brother was on the verge of being murdered - and Castiel flared his wings defensively at the sight of the weapon. The fact that it would do very little damage to an angel didn’t seem to matter as Castiel’s heart crammed itself into his throat.

At Castiel’s sudden movement, the barrel of the shotgun swung towards him reflexively and Castiel launched himself forward with a snarl – _neutralize that threat, soldier!_ – wings snapping out and filling the room. He saw Sam’s eyes widen, saw the barrel of the gun rise instinctively, but Castiel reached him first and sent the hunter sprawling on his back and the gun skittering away across the floor.

In the ensuing stillness, no one seemed to breathe.

Castiel fixed Sam with a glower, hands trembling, wings still spread threateningly.

His legs felt in danger of giving out, but Castiel forced himself to stay standing while he could, heart pounding against his ribs like it intended to break free. He took a step back so that he could clearly see both brothers, hating himself a little bit for how unsettled he was by their presence.

If anything, it was _them_ that should by wary of _him_.

Dean frantically looked around the room once more, still trying to piece together what had happened. He looked no less panicked, eyes dropping to the blood-caked bed and then up to Castiel’s wings, darting from one to the other without connecting the two.

“What did you – _are you ok_?!” the man finally managed to yell with great concern.

“I…” Castiel folded his wings tightly against his back, hating how exposed he felt. He glanced over at Sam, who was still on the floor, staring up at him with eyes as big as dinner plates, snapping back and forth from one wing to the other. “I…feel better now.”

He grimaced, hating everything.

Dean looked down and paused, bending slowly to pick his angel blade up off the floor.

Castiel tensed, the feathers all down the backs of his wings lifting.

He blinked.

Wait…

 _Wait_ …

After staring down at the blood-coated angel blade for a second, Dean looked up at him with eyes that were swimming with heartache.

“You did this to yourself?”

But Castiel wasn’t listening, because ice had just encased him from his toes to the tips of his hair. 

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t think.

…but he could sure as hell _feel_.

Like the way the hair on his arms sometimes stood on end, Castiel felt the same tingling pull all through his wings and his empty stomach heaved.

“Cas?...Cas, what’s wrong? Talk to us…”

But he couldn’t. Slowly, so slowly he might not have been moving at all, Castiel turned his head, forcing his eyes to remain open as he looked over his shoulder.

A breath shuddered loose from his chest.

He spread his wing.

He stared at the black and deep blue and white feathers. Every one of them pristine, sleek, and perfect. Unburned. Untouched. Under his own gaze, this feathers lifted and flared as adrenaline saturated his blood.

His stomach heaved and he stopped breathing, allowing himself to feel the presence of them and, most importantly, the _wholeness_ of them.

His knees cracked against the floor.

His face was wet.

His hands shook.

Curling over his folded knees, Castiel pressed his forehead and hands into the concrete floor, arching his wings up high over his back towards the Heavens, and inhaled a trembling breath.

“ _Ge iad dee-ess geh sa Madiiax, dripal I nonce dooain, dripal I nonce iehusoz_.”

His fingers, still caked with his dried blood, curled against the floor, and a sob threatened to burst from his chest. 

He let it.

“ _Ge iad dee-ess geh sa Madiiax, dripal I nonce dooain, dripal I nonce iehusoz_.”

His voice shook. His grace shook. His wings shook. He was so very tired.

But he prayed again, pushed his reverence and gratitude and guilt and joy and everything else that he was feeling into his words and clenched his fists.

“ _Ge iad dee-ess geh sa Madiiax, dripal I nonce dooain, dripal I nonce iehusoz_.”

He wept.

The lightbulbs burst.

Castiel prayed.

“ _Ge iad dee-ess geh sa Madiiax, dripal I nonce dooain, dripal I nonce iehusoz_.”

And prayed.

And _prayed_.

* * *

He realized he’d passed out only because he woke up. 

Castiel was on the floor of his bedroom still, the frigid concrete had already seeped deep into his bones and he shivered, pulling his wings close from where they had spread limp across the floor.

He savoured the feel of feathers against his skin.

His grace pulsed, pure and happy and bright even within the binding. 

But his heart ached, feeling as if it might shatter.

He did not deserve this.

But he couldn’t tell his Father to take his wings back. Couldn’t tell Him he didn’t deserve them when God had decided he did. It would be blasphemy. It would be treason. He could no more tell his Father that he was wrong than he could disobey an order from him.

Was his father even listening? He couldn’t be sure, but he had to praise His mercy all the same. What else could he do after this?

So, he did what was so deeply ingrained in him.

He prayed. 

He praised his Father’s name, praised His mercy, praised His glory, and tried to ignore the shameful joy and gut-churning guilt. How could he be so blessed and so cursed at the same time? Why would his Father restore _him_ , of all angels? There was no one less deserving of such a gift.

It seemed a very long time that the same despairing thoughts carved circles through his mind; it was longer still before he realized there was a hand on his wing.

Gentle pressure moving from the top of his wing down, over and over. So gentle and soft. It was…nice. Almost as nice as Dean’s voice as he sang – nearly whispered – somewhere behind Castiel’s head.

Castiel stopped his prayer and listened.

_“…don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better.”_

Very much against his will, Castiel smiled, feeling a spark of warmth in his chest for the first time in…he couldn’t remember. He let Dean’s surprisingly melodic voice roll over him and, for a moment, allowed himself to enjoy it.

“ _Remember to let her under your skin, then you’ll begin to make it better.”_

Dean switched to humming the rest of his tune, his voice rumbling over Castiel like thunder rumbled through the roof of the Impala. The comfort of it settled into his weary bones and he let his feathers fluff up, feeling Dean’s hand freeze midway down his wing.

“Cas?”

“M’why’d you stop singing?” Castiel mumbled against the floor. He was cold and there was much to do. He should get up and do some of it.

But Dean’s hand may as well have been a railroad spike pinning him to the floor. Shamelessly – if Dean was offering, Castiel would take it – he pushed his wing up in to the hunter’s unmoving hand, craving the touch and marvelling at the fact that his wings _could_ be touched.

It had been a _very_ long time.

Dean said nothing, but Castiel wasn’t sure he wanted him to. The man’s silences often revealed more than his words.

Slowly, Dean’s hand resumed its course, a little firmer now that Castiel was awake.

After a moment, Dean cleared his throat, apparently unable to stay quiet any longer and Castiel waited for him to pull his hand away. 

Just as well, he’d already indulged himself far more than he should have. He didn’t deserve comfort or warmth or his wings, or anything else. He owed debts and things that he had broken needed fixing.

As if reminded of the role it could play in his atonement, the binding around his grace contracted, digging in to him. He refused to flinch.

“So, uh…”

Dean cleared his throat again and, before the hunter could awkwardly pull his hand away, Castiel folded his wings in tight to his back and pushed himself to his knees, sitting on his heels.

Dean looked…vaguely traumatized and Castiel frowned. His green eyes were wide and shining with too much for Castiel to sort through. He was rubbing the palms of his hands on his jeans and staring at Castiel as if he were a house of poorly stacked cards on a windy day.

“How are you feeling?” Dean asked him, sounding worried and breathless. It was an odd combination.

A truth and a lie lodged themselves in Castiel’s throat, but neither slipped through. He looked away, unable to hold Dean’s gaze.

“Right…right, stupid question.”

Silence swelled between them like a whale carcase on the beach. Castiel wondered which of them was going to poke it first. Probably Dean, he reasoned. Dean was always the one going around poking delicate things and then getting angry when things got messy.

“Cas.”

Castiel closed his eyes, bracing for the explosion.

“Look, I know that my little mud-monkey brain probably can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through…or how it feels to get your wings back, or what it even means or how – how an angel responds to trauma – ”

That had Castiel’s eyes snapping open to stare at the man. He raked his eyes – all of them – over every centimeter of Dean’s face. But it told him nothing – he’d never been good at reading emotions anyway – so he looked deeper. Past his eyes and into his soul.

Because Dean Winchester did not use words like ‘trauma’.

He just didn’t.

Dean’s soul was as bright and fierce as ever. But it was throbbing like a sore thumb. It was in pain. _Dean_ was in pain.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. It came out much sharper than he would have liked, but he was under a little stress, so he thought he could be forgiven for his shortness. He’d always thought humans placed too much importance on tone anyway.

On the battlefield there was no time for this wordless dance that humans liked to do when they spoke to one another. 

Dean was frozen mid sentence. “…what? No, I’m fine.”

“You’re in pain, I can see it in your soul.”

Dean licked his lips and briefly looked away before holding up a single finger and pinning Castiel with that look that made him feel a hundred million years younger than he was. “Alright, ‘ _no_ soul-reading” is going on the list under ‘no mind-reading’, ok? I’m workin’ on…being more…honest.” Dean grimaced, as if he’d had to pull every one of those words out with plyers. “And yeah, I guess I’m hurting. I _am_ hurting, just…not the way you probably think.”

Castiel frowned, not understanding. That was no surprise, he understood little these days and his brain seemed to staunchly refuse even trying. 

Something on his face must have communicated that to the man before him, because Dean signed and his expression gentled.

“You’re scaring me, Cas.”

Just like that, the fragile peace Castiel had woken up to shattered. Coldness swept through him, the bindings around his grace squeezed tight enough to steal his breath, and shame curled behind his ribs.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“No listen,” Dean reached out and gently guided Castiel’s face back around to look at him. “I said that wrong. What I meant was I’m scared _for_ you. _You are not ok_. And Sam and me, we know how to stitch a wound or set a broken bone but…when it comes to stuff on the inside, we’re…we’re not so good at it.”

Dean let go of his face and looked away, unable to look Castiel in the eye. He wondered how the human would feel if he knew how many eyes there actually were to look in to.

“Everything with that stupid attack-dog spell and then Lucifer riding you around and then thinking I was dead and getting banished…not to mention everything leading up to all that over the last few years I…Cas, I don’t know how you’re still standing, man.”

Despite the way he chuckled, Dean’s green eyes were glossy and his hands shook while he picked at his thumbnail.

“Uh…” Dean cleared his throat again, “I think we might be closing in on the release spell for that binding. How are you holding up?”

Castiel blinked, feeling the bonds. His wings twitched. He sighed sharply through his nose.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Dean.”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“No. You don’t.”

The truth was mangled and gore-encrusted; it was messy and tear-stained; deep and ugly like a gangrenous wound. It smelled of charred flesh and burnt feathers. Tasted of congealed blood and tainted grace. 

The truth was shredded wings and ruined bonds. It was betrayal and failure and death and _lies_ and _guilt_ and _shame_. It was the clashing of steel and the severing of limbs. It was war and loss and countless casualties. It was scars and hatred; division and doubt; destruction and blight -

“Cas…”

Castiel opened his eyes. When had he closed them?

“Cas, hey, look at me…”

Dean’s hand was on his wing again, still this time, but warm and heavy. Castiel pulled himself off of the battlefield and back into his bedroom. Found himself staring into concerned green eyes.

“Where did you go, Cas?”

He frowned. “I’m right here, Dean.”

Something in Dean’s expression looked close to breaking, it trembled like a window rebuffing a rock. But he caught it, like he always did. Castiel’s heart ached for him. He wished he could take away Dean’s pain. He didn’t deserve it.

Instead, Dean moved his attention to Castiel’s wings; he took his hand away but his eyes lingered and Castiel watched his gaze trail down. His green eyes shone with what was likely a thousand questions, but his lips were pressed firmly together.

Castiel’s knees ached, and kneeling on the floor like this was awkward for him. He could not fold his wings against his back, they were too long and the flight feathers would have to bend against the floor, so he let them hang over his shoulders instead, so the flight feathers could lay parallel to the floor.

Not that his feathers couldn’t hold up to a little bending. They were stronger than titanium. But that wasn’t the point.

“Tell me about your wings, Cas,” Dean demanded softly.

He assumed Dean wanted an explanation for the drama that had unfolded over the last few hours…or however long it had been.

With a jolt, he realized he hadn’t been praying for the many long minutes he and Dean had been talking and a spike of disgust and fear rammed itself down his throat.

He pitched forward, intending to redouble his efforts, feeling an itch that overtook even the fire of his bonds to praise his Father’s mercy. To beg forgiveness. To prostrate himself. To serve. To obey.

But Dean caught him before he could slap his hands to the floor, grabbing both his wrists and hauling him back upright. Castiel’s wings flared to balance him.

“ _No_ , Cas.”

“I must!” He tried to pull himself free of Dean’s grip, but he was too weak without his grace. He beat his wings in great, sweeping gusts, kicking up dust and papers and making Dean’s flannel shirt flap wildly behind him.

But Dean wouldn’t let go and Castiel was too weak to keep fighting.

“Why?” Dean grunted as Castiel finally relented, wings still half spread like he might have the energy to try again in a moment. “Tell me why you need to…to pray or whatever it was you were doing! I know it’s hard, Cas, but please just _try_ to explain it to me.”

Castiel panted, hating himself for a multitude of reasons. He wished Dean would let go of his wrists; his hands, so comforting before, now felt like shackles.

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean waited until Castiel looked up and met his gaze. “ _Tell me why you need to pray._ ”

The order might as well have been a pry-bar between Castiel’s teeth and he growled, trying again to pull free from Dean’s grip. 

Dean held tight.

“ _Because I don’t deserve this_!” he snarled, “I don’t _deserve_ my wings back! Why did He restore _me_?! Why?!” He surged in to Dean’s space, relishing the way his eyes widened with poorly concealed fear as they flicked to Castiel’s wings spread so aggressively. “Why _me_ , Dean?! The _least_ deserving of any angel left? I _broke_ Heaven, my wings should be broken in kind! At least then I could atone for _one_ of the crimes I have committed. How can I atone for my sins _now_ , Dean? _How_?!”

His grace pulsed in his agitation and his bonds crushed back. He grunted, as if he’d just taken a blow to the sternum, but ploughed on.

Dean had given him an order, after all. 

“I do not deserve the joy my wings bring me. I am a failure, a liar, and a murderer. A _traitor_. I deserve _nothing_. Even death would be a mercy, Dean, why –” he bowed his head, unable to hold Dean’s gaze anymore as despair and confusion crawled up his throat. “ _Why_? Why would He _do_ this to me? Why would He take away the one punishment I needed most?” He felt his tears drying in sticky tracks on his face, and finally answered Dean’s question, his voice ringing hollow in his ears. 

“What else can I do but praise Him and His mercy? Forever. For the rest of eternity. For however long it takes for my Father to either kill me or give me orders on how I can _properly_ atone for my sins. _What else can I do, Dean_?”

Dean seemed beyond words. Woodenly, he pried his hands from Castiel’s wrists. The corners of his mouth were pulled down and his green eyes stared into Castiel’s. Several times he opened his mouth but said nothing and the two of them sat in silence as the bonds around Castiel grew tighter.

* * *

Translation and pronunciation for Castiel's Prayer: (used from [this website](https://www.scribd.com/doc/114095778/Lords-Prayer-Enochian))

 **Our Father** Who **Art** In **Heaven**

 **Gee-ay Ee-ah-day** dee-ess **gay-ha** sah-ah **mah-dree-ih-axay**

 **Great** Is **Your** Name

 **Dree-lah-pah-ah** ih **en-ohn-caheh** doh-oh-ah-ee-nay

 **Great** Is **Your** Mercy

 **Dree-lah-pah-ah** ih **en-ohn-caheh** ee-eh-hay-uu-soo-zod

LEMME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left a comment! You guys are the driving force behind updates! <3


	4. Chapter 4

Dean had helped him to his bed; he had wordlessly watched as Castiel curled his right wing around his shoulder and laid down on top of it, then folded his left over himself to create a soft, warm, comforting cocoon.

He wanted to block out Dean, Sam, the bunker…everything. For a while, he wanted to refuse to acknowledge anything but the darkness and warmth and weight of being inside his wings again.

It was a great comfort. One he never thought he’d have again and one he did not deserve now. But it was now, more than ever, that he needed it.

Dean had forbidden him from praying any more, the binding around his grace was sharp and tight, and the black maw of despair in his chest was growing bigger and bigger.

He longed for unconsciousness and shamelessly asked Dean to give it to him.

Outside the protective barrier of his wings – _coward_ – Castiel could _feel_ the hesitation in Dean’s silence.

Eventually, there came the sound of the small glass vial clinking against the syringe, the silence as the drug was pulled into the needle, and then the heavy presence of Dean standing just outside his wings.

Castiel pulled his wing back just enough to stare up at Dean and produce his arm. When the darkness began to crowd around the edges of his vision, Castiel wondered if Dean had given him too much. 

It didn’t matter. 

He let his wing fall.

* * *

“So? how did it go?”

Dean silently grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels from its spot beside the toaster and turned to the kitchen table, plunking it down in the middle before taking a seat across from his brother.

Sam winced, “That bad?”

Dean swallowed, wondering how in the ever-loving- _fuck_ he was supposed to find the words to describe what had just happened in Cas’ bedroom.

Vividly, blue and black and white feathers, the colors had been hard to distinguish in the dark room, were still filling his brain as fully as Cas’ wings had seemed to fill the room.

“We’re out of etorphine,” he decided to start with. He needed to paint an accurate picture here. He wasn’t going to be able to do this alone. Sam needed to know everything. This was a wound unlike any they had tried to stitch before. 

With a solemn nod and a tightening around his already troubled eyes, Sam said, “I’ll go back to the zoo. Get some more.”

“She’s gonna start asking questions,” Dean muttered. The zoo vet owed them her life, and as such had been eager to supply them with the medication they used to sedate the elephants, but this was the third vial of the sedative they’d be asking her for.

“I’ll handle it,” Sam promised. “Tell me what happened with Cas.”

Dean cleared his throat, looking down at his hands and digging desperately for the words he needed. “He’s…it’s…”

Grunting in frustration at his own inability to just _say_ stuff, he uncapped the bottle, took three long pulls, and ignored Sam’s increasingly alarmed gaze as he tried to forget the image of plunging a syringe between the track marks on an angel’s arm.

“Just give it to me straight, Dean. What does he need? What do we need to do?”

Dean pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes, waiting for the alcohol to loosen his tongue. “I don’t know, Sammy.”

Across the table, Sam let out a breath. Dean only called him Sammy when things were really, _really_ , bad. 

“He’s messed up. Bad,” he continued. He stared at the table, remembering the way Castiel’s blue eyes had glowed in the darkness of his bedroom. Remembering how he shook incessantly, how he sobbed, how he cried, how he fought Dean’s hold like it burned, how he’d only talked because Dean had ordered him to.

He swallowed again when the alcohol tried to burn its way back up.

He made sure it stayed down by piling a few more swigs on top of it. Then he started talking. If he was going to order Cas to talk then he was going to order himself to talk too.

So, he told Sam all that had happened after he had shoved his brother out of Cas’ bedroom. He told Sam how Cas had prayed until he’d passed out – did _not_ tell him about the wing-petting and the singing – how he’d woken up and kept right on praying. Told him how Cas had stared at him with eerie, glowing eyes, how he had refused to speak until Dean ordered it. Told him what Cas said about how he deserved nothing, how he felt about being shown mercy when he should be punished. How the angel didn’t know what else to do but praise his Father and praise His mercy and just…wait.

“This is some biblical shit, Sam. I don’t know how we’re gonna help him. He’s…he’s devastated by the fact that he feels happy about getting his wings back…how fucked up is that? He’s terrified that he won’t be able to atone for his sins now because he’s been ‘restored’, or whatever. He feels _guilty_ because he’s not suffering as much as he thinks he should!” Dean spread his arms incredulously, “How the fuck are we supposed to tackle this, Sam?! How are we supposed to singlehandedly reverse billions of years of angelic brainwashing and military conditioning and whatever the fuck else?! And that’s on top of whatever Chuck programmed into their brains that can’t be changed _at all_ –”

“Dean, _breathe_!”

He _was_ breathing, fuck-you-very-much. Maybe a little too fast, maybe a little too deep, but he was doing it.

Sam was suddenly next to him, hauling Dean’s chair away from the table – with him still in it – like he weighed nothing. Ignoring his squawk of protest, Sam grabbed his shoulder and shoved, forcing Dean to fold over his knees while he gasped for air.

“Ok, maybe leaving _you_ in there to deal with that wasn’t such a good idea,” Sam admitted.

“ _You think?!_ ” Dean snarled at the floor, trying to catch his breath.

He couldn’t do this. It was too huge and he was too emotionally challenged. 

“Alright just…just take deep breaths, Dean. We can help Cas, we just need to break it down into more manageable steps.”

Dean wondered who Sam was trying to convince with that tone.

He wanted to punch something. Really _fucking_ hard.

Once Dean had calmed down and gotten his breathing under control, Sam retook his seat across the table with a pensive frown. He wondered how his brother could look so…so _not_ overwhelmed by everything that was happening in the bedroom down the hall.

They had an Angel of the Lord trapped in there like an injured bird in a shoebox. A very powerful, very unstable, injured bird. He’d known angels were messed up…but Dean didn’t think it had really sunk in until now.

God had made these creatures to be blindly obedient, fiercely loyal, and incapable of autonomous thought. To the point where, apparently, their brains just…broke if something happened and one of those three things was changed.

Somehow, they had to get Cas to believe he didn’t deserve eternal suffering, that being happy was ok, and that God was actually kind of a monster that should not be thanked for much of anything. 

Dean felt very much like the task before them was going to be like trying to teach a fish how to breathe air.

Sam had pulled a notepad from somewhere – he had them stashed everywhere – which meant he was ready to get down to serious business and Dean felt his nerves settle a little. Sam was good at this stuff, he was smart, he was much more in tune with his emotions than Dean, and if anyone could plot them a way out of this kind of trouble it was Sam.

For now, Dean just did as he was told, and kept breathing.

* * *

**_Two nights later_ **

* * *

The room was dark and choked with tension, a current of energy vibrating between the three occupants.

“I had to relieve more pressure,” Castiel explained, trying to subdue the irrational fear prickling along his spine and forcing his attention from the angel blade in Dean’s hand and up to his eyes. “I couldn’t take it anymore, Dean. I’m sorry and I understand if…if you can’t trust me. I’ll leave…just, please tell me what spell you used so I can –”

“Leave – just, you’re not going _anywhere_ , Cas, I – you’re – god _dammit_!”

Sam was standing by the door to Castiel’s bedroom, leaning into the wall like it was the only thing holding him up. But his brown eyes were sharp and focused…on Castiel. He stared, following every movement Castiel made. But when Dean snapped, apparently having reached his emotional limit for the morning, Sam pushed away from the wall, intending to intervene, by the looks of it.

The brothers were in their pyjamas, hair messy and faces creased. Castiel had tired hard not to wake them, but he couldn’t hold back the groans of pain this time, and apparently Dean was a very light sleeper when he wanted to be.

“ _Tell me_ what you were doing, Cas,” Dean snapped.

Castiel grit his teeth, eyeing the blade in Dean’s hand. Why was he still holding it anyway? It was _Castiel’s_ blade. It was part of _him_. It did not belong in someone else’s hand.

He’d just opened his mouth, compelled to answer, when Sam spoke up first, “Dean, remember what we talked about.”

Dean deflated like a popped balloon and met Castiel’s eye with great effort.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” he ground out, “I’m just _upset_ ,” here his eyes flicked over to glare at his brother before snapping back to Castiel, “that I walked in on you carving yourself up like an Easter ham!”

As he spoke, Dean gesticulated, the angel blade flashing in his hand, and Castiel could not contain a flinch when it caught the light from the hallway, flashing like a spark of angry grace.

“Dean, put the blade down!” Sam snapped, too loud.

Castiel’s chest burned where the sigil was half carved into his chest.

The elder hunter looked down at the blade in his hand like he’d forgotten it was there; when he looked up at Castiel, something in his face shifted and then crumpled, and he tossed the blade on the bed like it had burned him.

Castiel stared at it. His wing twitched. His fingers curled.

“Take it, Cas,” Dean nearly whispered. He looked like he was in pain. Again. Like he had a bullet hole in him somewhere that he didn’t want anyone to know about.

Castiel didn’t need to be told twice. He took a step forward and grabbed his blade – the tip was still red with his blood – hugging it to his chest. He could breathe again, though he wondered for how long. After a moment of it’s comforting weight against his bare skin, Castiel let it dissolve back in to his vessel’s right forearm, where it would wait until he summoned it again.

His grace calmed. The bonds chaffed and stung. He swayed where he stood.

It was Sam that spoke next, soft but firm. “Castiel, can you tell us what you were trying to do before Dean stopped you?”

Hearing his full name from Sam’s mouth was…odd, Castiel decided. Sam and Dean were really the only two beings in the universe that called him ‘Cas’. But he supposed Sam _had_ called him Castiel a few times, when they had first met. He wondered why he was suddenly doing it again.

He decided to shake it off for now. It wasn’t important. 

He focused on the question Sam asked him, grateful that it wasn’t an order. “I…I woke up. It was dark and I…couldn’t remember what had happened and…I was in pain. Again. I thought having my wings here with me would have helped relieve the pressure for a while longer but…when I woke up just now it felt like I was being crushed again. I don’t know how to explain the feeling, but I needed to relieve the pressure and the only way I could think of doing that now was to...” he motioned vaguely to the half-finished sigil cut in to his chest.

“What does it do?” Sam asked.

Castiel swallowed. “It will smother my grace…so that there is nothing for the binding to crush.” He didn’t tell them it would need to be re-cut every day. The lines needed to be clean and continuous. Scabs and new skin would break those lines and render the sigil useless.

He wondered if the spell could hear him, because just then it constricted hard enough to make him gag and he stumbled backwards, wings flaring as his back hit the wall and he slid to the floor.

They really needed to discuss just where this spell had been found. Castiel was almost convinced it was sentient. He clutched at his chest, fingernails catching on open skin and slipping in blood, and the binding tightened.

He slammed his head back against the wall and cursed, wishing he could sink his claws into those magical ropes and shred them. He was angry – enraged – but there was nothing to kill. Nothing to fight.

The brothers were both crouching in front of him, talking, asking if he was ok, asking what was happening.

“What do you think is happening?!” he barked. They were trying to pull his hands out of the mess on his chest but he placed the large joint of each wing on their chests and shoved them away hard enough to put them on their asses. “You _bound_ me! Do you even know what that means? Did you bother to understand that spell before you used it?”

 _Of course they hadn’t_ , Castiel’s mind hissed, _they’d only looked it up in case they needed to leash you while you were Rowena’s dog. You were and are just an animal to them. They’re hunters, be grateful they haven’t put you down._

He braced his bloody hands against the floor as the wave of pain ebbed. He didn’t want to look at them; didn’t want to see the pain in their eyes – or the fear. 

_You’re scaring me, Cas._

He couldn’t keep going like this. He couldn’t wait for them to find the release for this spell while he sat in this room and slowly lost his mind. He was a soldier – an _angel_. Angels do not lay down and die. He would not let these two humans and their caveman binding spell take him down. A good soldier was _never_ out of options.

He manifested his blade in his hand.

“Cas,” Dean froze in an aborted reach, his and Sam’s eyes both wide.

Castiel brought the point of the blade to where he’d left off with the sigil. When the brothers both reached for him, he looked over, met their gaze and calmly continued carving the sigil into his skin. This one was intricate, and he had all his other eyes on it to make sure it was perfect.

As predicted, the two humans froze, reasonably disturbed by the sight.

I took less than a few seconds for him to complete the sigil and link the first line to the last. Castiel felt his grace pulse and then fade like he was turning down the dial on a gas stove.

He finally let a breath stutter from his chest.

His grace was there, but it was dormant. _Almost_ as if it wasn’t there at all. He refused to panic about it. He knew what the sigil was for, knew exactly what it was doing, and knew the second he dragged his blade through it and broke the lines that his grace would come to life once more.

For now, this was the only way he was going to be able to function until they found a way to undo the binding Dean had put on him.

After he had taken a moment to calm himself back down – the heart-stopping _terror_ of barely being able to feel his grace was awful even though he’d done it on purpose – Castiel sheathed his blade.

Brief, but terribly real, memories of reaching for his grace after Metatron had cut him open and taken it flashed through his mind. He brought his hand to his throat, needing to confirm there was no gaping wound through which his grace had been stolen.

His heart threw itself against his ribs.

Finally, with no reason not to, Castiel looked over at the brothers who had stayed firmly on the floor. They were silent and looked sad and…thoroughly overwhelmed. But it was Dean that looked like he might need to vomit.

Castiel nearly sighed, unable to fully relish the absence of his bindings. They were still there of course, but with his grace so dimmed, there was nothing for the spell to do.

He was, once again, exhausted, and Castiel closed his eyes, unwilling to stare across the vast canyon that seemed to be growing between him and the brothers. He’d never felt so starkly aware of the differences that separated their species.

He felt better and worse than he had in days.

How could they possibly recover from this?

* * *

* * *

Dean drained the neck of his beer in less than a second, feeling the _thump thump thump_ of bass music vibrating in his chest.

He was sitting in one of those places in Lebanon that you drive by but never actually stop and go in to. But he’d needed to get away. Desperately. He needed to get out of that bunker and do something that involved other, more _normal_ humans.

The place wasn’t a dive, per-se, but he certainly would not be bringing his mother here to showcase the world’s last thirty or so years of dining advancements. 

Dean gulped down another few mouthfuls of…whatever the waitress had brought him. She was in her twenties and he’d told her to surprise him. 

He looked at the label. Some hipster craft beer with a crudely hand-drawn image for a label. Not surprising.

Whatever, it had alcohol in it and that was really all he was after.

He let his thoughts stray back to his mother. Another complication in his life at the moment. As if he didn’t have enough of those already. He’d spoken to her only a handful of times. Though to be fair she seemed to be doing her best to avoid them. At least, that’s what it felt like to Dean. He’d never really thought of what life might be like if his mother suddenly returned from the grave when he was pushing forty because…well why would he? But he had to imagine that if he had, he’d have assumed he’d speak to his mother more than a few times in a week. Especially since they were living in the same house. It was a pretty massive house…but still.

He also would probably have assumed that those few conversations wouldn’t have been as forced and stilted as they were but…well, here he was.

Granted, she likely needed some space. The last time she had been a part of the world, cellphones hadn’t even existed.

When Dean finished off his beer, the waitress brought him another, very similar looking, but different bottle. It tasted the same.

Sam seemed to be getting along with Mary well enough and Dean wondered if that was perhaps because he had no memories of her and so, had no expectations. They spoke more frequently then she and Dean did but the conversations were short and shallow. They touched on nothing of importance. Nothing of the past or of memories or of their father.

She had expressed interest in leaving the bunker, but both Sam and Dean had talked her out of it. For now. But once a hunter, always a hunter, and the woman had begun pouring over newspapers like she couldn’t wait to get back out into the world and get herself killed.

Dean didn’t know what to do about the situation or the emotions it inflicted upon him. He _did_ know that he could go to therapy for the rest of his life and never sort through all the crap that was swirling around in his head these days.

He wondered if maybe Naomi hadn’t been on to something after all. A lobotomy might not be such a bad idea if it meant he could forget the last few years of his life.

Dean bit down on his tongue hard as a punishment for even thinking such a thing. Even if Cas wasn’t around to hear it, Dean should not be trivializing one of many horrific things the angel had been put through.

He sighed.

A blond girl that was way too young to be in a bar caught his eye and winked. He rolled his eyes before he could stop himself and received a glittery glower in response.

He wondered how Cas was doing, feeling guilty that the angel was mostly the reason he was at the bar in the first place. His hand clenched around the neck of the nearly empty bottle.

Over the last few days there had been some serious self reflection going on inside the bunker. It had taken his best friend throwing himself to the ground and praying to a god that was no longer listening until he passed out from exhaustion, but finally Dean had realised that something about their lives and how they moved through it needed to change.

And it needed to change right fucking now.

Sam, who had probably realised the same thing ages ago, seemed to already have the information on how to get started ready to go on his laptop. He inundated Dean’s inbox with article after article on trauma, PTSD, self-care, journaling, mental health awareness, and a load of other crap that Dean hadn’t even known was something people talked about, much less studied.

They’d both read the same publications, taken the same quizzes, done the same homework, and come to the same conclusion.

They were royally fucked up.

Another beer was plunked down in front of him and he vowed to nurse this one a little better. He had to drive home, after all.

It had started with talking – if you could call it that – about John Winchester and had ended with them storming away from each other and slamming their bedroom doors.

The day after that started with grumbled but sincere apologies and breakfast beer while they picked up the conversation again. That time it had ended with carefully hidden tears.

The day after _that_ had started ugly – well, the past was ugly, so it made sense – and hadn’t ended much better.

Through it all, Mary was absent. Neither he nor Sam went looking for her in the bunker. She’d made it clear she needed space to adjust and they had their own shit to work through. As much as it pained him to think it, having their mother around while trying to work through their shit probably would have made things much less productive. 

It was hard to talk about how abusive and neglectful your dad was and how it had affected you when your mom was listening. Dean wouldn’t have been able to say what he was actually thinking or feeling if she had been there.

Despite the arguments and the opening of old wounds and the fact that he felt like he had flayed himself bare in front of Sam…Dean felt better. Lighter than he would have thought possible. Though he supposed that after spilling your guts like they had been for the last few days, you were bound to feel a bit lighter. 

It felt as if they had broken a bone that hadn’t set properly and now it was finally healing right.

He felt like they might be starting on a path that may lead somewhere…decent? Stable? Good? 

Something like that.

He only hoped they could lead Cas down that path with them, if only they could figure out _how_.

He paid without finishing his last beer and slid behind the wheel of the Impala.

Yesterday, day four since they had started _talking_ , had consisted of taking a sledge hammer to a whole different can of worms. Yesterday, Dean had had to face the fact that some of the blame for Cas’ self-hatred was squarely on his shoulders.

Yesterday, Dean had had to say, out loud, that when it came to Cas, he’d been less of a friend and more of a slave driver.

He hated it. He hated himself. He hated that their lives just couldn’t be simple and easy for once.

Things had to change. _He_ had to change. More honest, Sam told him, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how awkward or uncomfortable it felt. No covering up hurt feelings with harsh words. No hiding behind alcohol and bad humor.

And most importantly, and certainly most difficult, they had to stop talking to each other only when they had something bad to say.

Dean tried to remember a time he had told Sam he was proud of him. Tried to remember a time he had praised Cas for something good he had done. He tried to remember if he had ever said something positive to anyone at all just because it was nice to say nice things to people sometimes. 

He came up blank. 

Most of the time, when he spoke to either Sam or Cas, it was to discuss the terrible thing they were knee deep in and find a way out of it. Or it was to yell at them for doing something stupid like risking their lives or not listening to him. Often it was to assign blame.

Worst of all, Dean thought, was the times when none of them said anything at all. They just sat and let their mental wounds fester and rot. And the more Dean forced himself to think about it, the more he realized that Team Free Will’s silences had begun to outweigh their voices.

The highway disappeared under the Impala’s tires, and Dean cast the occasional glance towards the stars. Out here, the light pollution couldn’t reach them, and they glittered down at him; sharp and accusing.

He’d played a part in nearly killing one of those stars. He’d ripped an angel from the sky and hadn’t even had the decency to just stab it like most of the things he killed. No, he’d picked Castiel apart slowly, with words, with silences and with actions, all of which the angel did not – could not – understand. 

Angels don’t _hear_ subtle, don’t know _how_ to fill in the blanks. They don’t _see_ body language. And they don’t understand metaphors or euphemism. You could no more communicate with an angel by using body language and metaphors than you could communicate to a blind person by using sign language. 

And Dean had known that all along. Still he’d chosen to leave Castiel confused and guessing at what was expected of him. He was left to try and figure out why Dean was yelling at him, cursing him, asking him to stay and telling him to go – often in the same sentence. Among other things. Dean had been cruel. Castiel had tried so hard to talk, to ask questions, to figure out what Dean wanted from him.

Not anymore, Dean thought bitterly. Cas rarely spoke these days unless he was asked a direct question. He’d learned that staying quiet was safer when it came to the Winchesters.

His worst transgression against Cas, as far as he was concerned, was telling the angel he was part of their family and then doing and saying things to the angel that he would never, ever, do to Sam.

It didn’t need to be that way, Sam had pointed out to him, with some trouble of his own. And the fact that his much more emotionally mature little brother seemed to be struggling with these new concepts as well made Dean feel a little better.

Talking was _hard_ …but it was better than where _not_ talking had gotten them.

The access road to the bunker was long, dark, and littered with potholes and Dean eased the Impala down it at a crawl, vowing – as he always did – to get some gravel and fill them in sometime soon.

Dean and Sam both had a list of things they needed to work on. They had kept it short, as the kind of changes they were trying to make were difficult. Dean repeated them like a mantra in his head whenever he thought of them, just to make sure they would stick.

Number one? Be kind. So simple, in theory, when your whole life didn’t revolve around protecting yourself and those you love from evil. Dean had laughed when Sam had made that the first thing on their list. But he hadn’t been laughing when literally an hour later he was biting his tongue to keep from snapping something nasty at Cas as the angel struggled to stay standing, his wings quivering behind him with exhaustion.

Number two: Be kind to _themselves_. They were to try _not_ to let their ‘inner critics’ – seriously where had Sam come up with these terms anyway – have too much control.

Number three: keep their minds open to the needs of others.

Mainly, at the moment, that meant Cas and their mother. But mostly Cas. Mary had seemed to adjust shockingly well to being alive. But she was human, talking to her and predicting what she might need from them was much easier and more natural than with Cas.

Besides which, on the rare occasion Dean did outright ask Cas what he needed he was met with either stony silence or confusion. As if he couldn't understand why anyone would care what he needed or why it would even matter.

Seeing that confusion on the angel's face hurt in a way Dean couldn't explain with words.

Dean pulled the car in to the garage and sat there for a while after he killed the engine.

Of course, Castiel was an angel, but if Dean wanted to prove to him that he was just as much a part of this little family as him and Sam were then Dean was going to have to consider things he had never wanted to bother with before.

It was one thing to just _say_ Cas was family, it was another thing entirely to prove it to him. 

He tried to remind himself as often as possible now that Cas wasn’t just Cas. He was Castiel, and he had _been_ Castiel for millions upon millions of years before Dean had become part of his life. He was the size of the Chrysler building. He had wings and thousands of eyes and he thought differently than humans did. It was easy to forget that, when he walked around in a human body and talked like a human and dressed like a human.

But now, more than ever, it was clear that he was _not_ human. Even though he’d gotten better at pretending, Dean was starting to think that maybe it was more important that he _stop_ pretending. After all, Cas would never expect _them_ to sprout wings and start speaking to him in Enochian, why had Dean expected Castiel to hide his wings and learn how to wear a tie properly? 

A tie. On a creature the size of the Chrysler building.

Dean wondered how he might feel if a flea yelled at him for the way one of his eyebrow hairs was sitting.

Confused, mostly. Which explained a lot about most of Cas’ very limited range of facial expressions.

With a sigh and an ache in his bones that didn’t belong in a forty year old, Dean heaved himself from the car and made for the door that lead in to the bunker.

He did a double take when he noticed the truck nearest to the garage door was gone. It was the one Sam favoured, but his heart skipped a beat.

Had Mary left or had Sam?

He rushed inside.

* * *

[Art by Ella Brennan](https://www.instagram.com/ellabrennanbutler/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme know what you think! I wanted to add more picture but couldn't find any I liked...I wish I know how to use photoshop so I could make my own edits...ugh. I've become obsessed with adding pictures to my fics lately.


	5. Chapter 5

The next time Castiel woke it was, thankfully, gentler than the last. But after a moment, he felt a tingling up his spine and both his marginal and secondary coverts rose to attention.

His grace pulsed, angry in the confines of the binding. The sigil must have scabbed over. 

Redrawing it would have to wait. Someone was in the room with him. Someone he was quite sure was neither Sam nor Dean. Castiel knew the feel of their presence by now, even without access to his grace. 

Pushing the pain aside as best he could – he was good at that – Castiel snapped his wings out and up in a threatening display, rolling to his feet. 

He was ready – might almost say he was _eager_ – for a fight.

Mary Winchester flinched in her chair, but the gun she aimed at his chest was steady.

Castiel felt like he’d been punched in the gut. 

Mary. 

He’d _forgotten_ about Mary.

“Don’t move,” she ordered, her voice steady.

Still reeling from the fact that he’d forgotten something as cosmic as Sam and Dean’s mother returning from the grave, Castiel merely tilted his head to the side, thoroughly blindsided, his wings still spread and frozen on either side of him.

“Why…are you pointing a gun at me?” he asked, as if it were important. As if the answer mattered or impacted him at all. “Where are Sam and Dean?” Ah. That was better.

“Out. And _they_ might trust you but _I_ don’t.”

Her words didn’t seem to hold any maliciousness, she was merely stating a fact, but the steely look in her eye made Castiel draw his wings back in, folding them close to his body. There was a jarring familiarity in the look in her eye; in the way she was pointing that gun at him.

“You’re a hunter,” he recalled. Dean looked at the monsters he hunted with those exact same eyes, in that exact same way. 

Like there was a stain at the end of their gun that they were itching to blast off the face of the earth.

“Yes, and I normally do more than just _point_ a gun at things like you.”

Her words cut deeper than he could have predicted. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because this was just another sign of Castiel’s impermanence in Dean and Sam’s lives. Certainly, if their mother did not approve of her sons having an angel around then he would soon be asked to leave. 

Again.

Though he supposed that was for the best. He’d very nearly killed all three of them, he should not wait until he is _asked_ to leave. He should not force them into the position of _having_ to ask. He should just go.

But even as he thought this, his grace roiled, the binding squeezed, and he doubled over with a grunt.

He could barely walk on his own, let alone anything else.

“That gun won’t kill me,” he panted, pressing a hand to his chest, willing his grace to settle. He considered taking his blade out right then and there to redraw the sigil but decided Mary had probably been traumatized enough for one lifetime.

“It’ll slow you down.”

Castiel leveled a glare at the woman, feeling none of the warmth he would have expected to feel towards Dean’s sire.

“Are you concerned I might need slowing down?” he drawled, scrunching his eyes shut around another twist of pain. He spat an Enochian curse word but it did little to dull the needle-like stabs spiking within his chest.

He gave in and lowered himself to his knees, placing his hands on his thighs and letting his wings relax as he took deep breaths. The pain did not recede and anger flared behind his ribs.

If he asked nicely, he wondered if Mary might take his blade and kill him.

He doubted it.

“Where is that medicine Dean was giving me?” He rubbed at the inside of his elbow, glancing around the room through narrowed eyes, as if the pain inside him where the glare of the sun.

“You used it all. Sam went to get more.”

Castiel closed his eyes again and bowed his head. He was alone with his pain for now then. Fine, he’d simply re-carve the sigil and Mary could deal with witnessing it.

“I need my blade,” he warned her with only half the sentence he’d planned to, but another squeeze from the binding cut him short. 

“Are you kidding? I’m not giving you your knife.”

“I wasn’t asking,” Castiel growled, a wave of rage riding a wave of pain. He did not have the patience to give her the Be Not Afraid spiel. The constant pain was making him _somewhat_ irritable. As Dean would say, _so sue him_. “It is the only thing that will _cut_ me sufficiently deep for a sigil to work properly, if you are unable to watch, then turn your back.”

She swallowed, readjusting her shot gun as if the mere idea of turning her back on him was suicide. “Your eyes are glowing. What does that mean?”

“It means I am _very_ tired and _very_ annoyed.” Castiel manifested his blade, both uncaring and unsurprised that he was showing through his vessel. In the chaotic mess of the last few days? Week? He barely had control of himself, he did not have the mental space to be worried about what bits of his angelic body were and were not slipping through and scaring his human hosts.

If they hated seeing even the smallest glimpse of what he truly was then they could kick him out. But, until then, Castiel could not afford the energy to care how they felt. 

“Put the knife down!” she barked at him, getting to her feet and taking aim with the shotgun.

He lifted his head to glare at her, feeling his grace crackle, ready for a fight.

The binding crushed back. He gasped and doubled over, but refused to drop his blade. His hand shook with the strain of keeping hold of it and he _almost_ let it slip through his fingers.

He glared down at his hand as if it had a mind of its own.

“Sam told me to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid while he was gone, so you _won’t_ until they get back.” She looked frightened, but no less stubborn than Dean had in that barn when he’d plunged that demon blade into Castiel’s chest. She shifted the gun again, as if to get a better grip on it. “ _Lay down_.”

Castiel was mostly fueled by a burst of pure rage when he lunged forward faster than Mary’s human eyes could register. A niggling pull to _actually_ lie down as commanded struggled for attention in the back of his mind but, in his outrage, it was easy enough to ignore. 

He grabbed the shot gun barrel just as she fired a round that clipped his shoulder and he bent the barrel up towards the ceiling before ripping it from her grasp and tossing it to the other side of the room.

He pressed in to her personal space, could smell her sudden spike of fear, and she scrambled away from him. Her eyes were wide, and she was trying very hard not to let that fear show.

“That didn’t slow me down much,” he growled through his teeth.

Having made his point – he was still a god damn angel and no _human_ with a _shotgun_ was going to tell him to lay down like a dog, no matter whose mother they were – he turned away from Mary and started stumbling towards the war room. A few rounds had made it into his shoulder and he hissed when he bumped in to the wall, jostling the wound. 

But that was the least of his worries.

He needed space. He couldn’t _breathe_ inside these concrete walls. The bunker had always felt cramped but now that his wings were free, it felt even smaller. Angels didn’t belong in boxes and they certainly did not belong underground.

Mary, it seemed, had wisely chosen not to follow him. 

He tried to feel bad for frightening her, but couldn’t quite manage it. 

Once he had reached the far walls and high ceiling of the war room, Castiel gratefully spread his wings in a stretch and brought the blade over his heart to begin re-carving the sigil.

He grit his teeth, wondering why everything always had to _hurt_ so much. Why had his Father made he and his siblings with the ability to feel pain? Surely they would have been much more effective soldiers if they couldn’t feel. Though he had long ago stopped trying to figure out the reasoning behind his Father’s choices.

He cursed, tossing his head back to glare at the ceiling, wondering when his existence had become so ridiculous and complicated. It used to be so _simple_.

Step one, get orders. 

Step two, execute orders.

Step three, wait for more orders.

He wasn’t saying Free Will was a _bad_ thing…but it certainly had its drawbacks.

The second he finished the last cut in his chest, connecting the first and last lines and completing the sigil, Castiel took a moment to consider his handy-work. The cuts were deeper this time, and his true-form was shining brightly through them. 

He winced. Dean wouldn’t like that. Dean didn’t like it when was injured enough for his grace to shine through. Dean didn’t like it when Castiel wasn’t as human as possible.

He looked down at his hands, covered in blood, and then past them to the floor, also covered in blood, and wished he’d had the foresight to at least grab a towel. 

Though he realised then that he didn’t even know where they were kept. 

He supposed, in the grand scheme of things, a bit more blood on the floor wasn’t that big a deal. Not when Castiel was standing with his wings spread, grace shining from the self-inflicted wound over his chest and through his eyes. Blood seemed fairly tame in comparison. The brothers likely wouldn’t even notice it.

He thanked the gods he hadn’t needed to manifest his halo. It might have been the last straw for those poor boys. He bitterly reminded himself that they seemed uncomfortable in his presence on a good day and that perhaps he should go back to his room where they wouldn’t have to look at him as much. At least until he was strong enough to cram everything back inside his vessel.

A family of hunters was likely already incredibly uncomfortable with an unstable angel in their space when they still looked human; Castiel could not imagine the blend of human and monster they were seeing now.

Even if it did make _him_ feel more comfortable to have his wings out, or have his halo to speak for him, or from time to time, leave his vessel behind entirely and just find an open field in which to _stretch_ …well, it was the Winchesters that he wanted to make sure felt more comfortable. He did not want them to start looking at him like he was something to be feared; something to be _hunted_.

The very thought of Dean looking at him like Mary just had made him want to vomit.

He glanced over at his left wing and then his right, wishing he had just put up with the pain instead of alienating himself even more. It was already obvious to everyone he met that he wasn’t _normal_ – wasn’t _human_. Even strangers could tell. They didn’t know what it was they were sensing; they just knew he was…wrong.

And besides, Dean reminded him often enough how different and weird he was.

Now he’d gone and made it that much more obvious. Up until now his wings had always been a source of pride for him. They were sleek and powerful, meant for diving and weaving and cutting down his enemies. He kept them impeccably groomed. Not a feather out of place, as was expected for a Seraph of his ranking.

Not that any of that mattered anymore.

Castiel’s wings in particular were, much like him, different.

The scars he’d gotten freeing Dean from hell were impressive; they were something even his most hated enemies begrudgingly gazed upon with respect and, sometimes, jealousy.

Before, when he was young, his wings had been a pure pristine white like all his brothers and sisters, when their grace was too young and too weak to leave it’s own mark. As an angel grew and changed, so did their wings; changed, molded and painted by their grace so that no two angels had the exact same wings.

He stretched his left one out, looking closely at his feathers for the first time in a long time. After all, not that long ago, his wings had been a ruined, skeletal mess.

He felt that pull deep inside him again, to fall to his knees and praise his Father, but it was faint enough to ignore at the moment.

The feathers along the leading edges, his marginal and primary coverts, had been charred black. Hellfire, it seemed, burned so deep that even after a molt the new feathers came in blacker than ink. But the scarring faded from black to navy a few inches down his secondary coverts. Then faded further to the same kind of blue as deep ocean waters, lightening to a lighter blue halfway down his primaries and secondaries that reminded Castiel of the sky on clear autumn days. Each of his secondaries had evenly spaced black bands that he rather thought tied in nicely with the black scarring on the leading edge.

The last half of his primaries and secondaries were white, as well as most of the feathers on the undersides of his wings.

He was, by angelic standards, still young. Young enough that not all the white had been replaced yet. In time, it would disappear. 

He stretched his wings farther and felt one corner of his mouth curl up. The flecks of gold were still visible, flashing here and there amid his deep blue scapulars. He’d always liked his gold spots, even if it was unusual. 

Soon enough his smile dropped away and he folded his wings close to his back. It was impossible to hide them now. Though they contained a small amount of his grace, he could not shove them back across the etheric barrier without access to all of it.

Besides, it _felt_ better to have them out. His wings had been in another dimension so long that he’d forgotten how right it felt to have them here with him. Connected to his body.

He rolled his shoulder, feeling three tiny metal balls under his skin. No sense in cleaning the blood off his hands and floor now when he was only going to make a bigger mess in a moment.

Now that his grace was dormant, he was going to need to heal the human way and let his vessel do all the work.

He sighed.

At least he had some of his energy back now that he was not in a constant state of being suffocated by his cruel bindings. Not for the first time, he wondered what _barbaric_ _neanderthal_ had even come up with such a crude spell before he realized it didn’t matter. To whoever had made it, they had obviously been going for efficiency over quality.

He reached under the table and pulled up one of the three first aid kits Velcro-ed to the underside of it.

He’d just dug two of the three tiny balls out with tweezers, scowling when he noticed a few droplets of blood smeared on his feathers, the blue underneath making it look purple, when Sam and Dean returned. From two different doors. At the same time. 

He frowned as Sam’s calm expression scrunched into one of concern as soon as he spotted Castiel standing at the massive table, bleeding from more places than what he was probably expecting.

Sam barrelled down the stairs and towards him with such urgency that Castiel felt himself taking a step back, the tweezers still held delicately just under his skin.

At the same time, Dean was charging in from the direction of the garage, an _intensely_ unhappy look on his face.

Castiel eyed the droplets of blood leading down the hallway from which Dean had come, leading the hunter straight to him like a morbid trail of breadcrumbs. 

He was always leaving a bloody mess in his wake.

He wondered where Mary had gone – hoping to whatever gods might still be listening that he wasn’t the one who ended up scaring her out of the bunker. Dean would never forgive him. As it was, he would likely be angry as soon as Mary told him Castiel had ruined one of their shotguns. 

To be fair, if she had not wanted her shotgun ruined, she should not haven pointed it at an angel.

As both men reached him at nearly the same time, Castiel took a deep breath, bracing himself.

“Cas?!” Dean cried, both of them were looking around the war room like they expected to see the enemies responsible for Castiel’s injured shoulder.

Castiel grit his teeth and pushed the tweezers further under his skin, using it as an excuse to not have to look either brother in the eye.

“What the hell happened to you?!” Dean threw a plastic bag of whatever he’d gotten while he was out onto the table and came to a halt next to Cas.

“Your mother shot me.”

Dead silence followed. 

Finally, the tweezers gripped the last bit of metal in his shoulder and he ripped it out with a hiss. He let the familiar pain of a flesh wound ground him. 

“She _shot_ you?”

The tweezers clattered into the small metal tray, blood smeared over the ends of them.

The tone in Dean’s voice made Castiel glance up, unsurprised to see both confusion and disbelief written across his face. Sam’s eyes dropped away to the floor, but he did not seem to share the same disbelief that his brother did. 

Surreptitiously, Sam looked over at Dean as if gauging his reaction.

“Yes,” Castiel explained, calmly picking up the seuture needle and thread. “To be fair, she did warn me that she normally does more than just _point_ a gun at things like me. I should have seen it coming.”

If he had, he could have avoided this entire uncomfortable encounter. If he hadn’t been in the state he was, she never would have had time to even squeeze the trigger.

His shoulders slumped.

Dean’s mouth dropped open a fraction before he caught it and his green eyes darted over Castiel’s shoulder. To his wings.

Even though he tried not to, Castiel self-consciously folded them tighter while trying to shove a bit of thread through the loop of the needle.

But Dean’s hand suddenly covered his own and Castiel stared up at him.

“Let me,” the hunter said quietly, taking the needle from him, not even reacting when a bit of Castiel’s blood smeared on his fingertips.

“I’ll go find her,” Sam muttered, escaping the room as well as the uncomfortable atmosphere.

Castiel said nothing while Dean stitched his wounds closed. Dean said nothing about his wings or the freshly carved sigil in his chest; nor did he ask what had led to him getting shot by his mother. His green eyes swam with too many things for Castiel to name. It felt as if there was so much both of them needed to say that the very thought of starting was too much at the moment.

And so they sat in silence.

“Sam got you some more painkillers,” Dean told him after a while.

“I hope I won’t need them anymore. The sigil…will help.”

There was so much he wanted to say and just had no energy with which to say it. Besides which, Dean would not listen anyway. Dean did not like to talk, not about anything important. Not about anything that mattered.

Castiel told himself that, even if he did talk, Dean likely would not care about what he wanted to say. The man had a lot on his plate right now and probably wanted to spend some time with his mother. Instead, he’d been forced to take care of Castiel since the moment they all got home.

When he felt the hunter start dabbing tenderly at the drying blood on his shoulder with an alcohol swab, Castiel could not help but look over.

Dean’s eyes were focused on his task, delicately cleaning the freshly sewn wounds. A muscle jumped in his jaw, giving away that he was not nearly as calm as he seemed.

“Are you alright, Dean?”

The hunter snorted, not looking up.

Castiel looked away, shame curdling like sour milk in his gut. He’d told himself not to talk. He _knew_ Dean didn’t like it. But he always felt compelled. It was the only way he knew how to communicate with these humans that could not read his wings or even see his halo, let alone hear it. So much of what he relied on to communicate with his own kind was utterly useless to humans. “I’m sorry I’ve caused you so much trouble.”

Dean closed his eyes, face scrunching up like he was in pain. “Cas…Cas, you aren’t the one that should be apologizing here,” Dean finally managed to grumble.

He tossed the cloth onto the small tray and looked Castiel in the eye, his gaze determined.

“ _I’m_ sorry, Cas. I’m sorry I did… _this_ , to you.” He waved his hand to encompass something larger and more abstract than just Castiel sitting before him. “I’m sorry you’ve had to cut yourself up because of the pain it’s causing you, I’m sorry I can’t figure out how to get this stupid binding off you. I’m sorry I used it in the first place without knowing what it would really do – god, Cas, I’m just _so fucking sorry_.”

Dean looked dangerously close to crying. Or breaking something. Or both. Either way there were tears welling in his eyes and Castiel could only stare stupidly as the man rose and viciously scrubbed them away with the same fury Castiel had seen him scrub bird shit off the Impala.

Normally, when he could tell Dean was agitated, Castiel would – he was ashamed to admit – sometimes place his wing over Dean’s shoulders in the ether. Dean was never able to feel it physically, of course, but on some level it seemed to help. Even if the hunter would have probably punched him in the face if he ever found out.

Castiel suspected that that kind of comfort – or any kind of comfort, really – was not something ‘guys’ did.

Now Castiel could lend no such assistance. In fact, he was so uncomfortably aware of the _non-human_ space that he occupied, that all he wanted to do was hide.

His wings twitched with the urge to wrap them around his own shoulders, but Dean had moved on to cleaning the fresh sigil. It didn’t need cleaning. 

Dean’s hands shook, and the light of Castiel’s body was reflecting in his green eyes.

When Sam appeared back in the room with his mother in tow, Castiel only felt a spike of annoyance and mild apprehension. He did not want to be in the same room as Mary. He did not want Dean to see the way she looked at him. Like he was some creature to be put down.

Though her eyes were downcast and demure as she followed her youngest son into the room, the muscle jumping in her jaw – so like Dean – betrayed her.

“I’m sorry, Castiel,” she spoke before anyone else could. Sam’s head snapped around to look at her, as if she had just broken some agreement they had come to before entering the room.

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, “I’m not normally so…jumpy. I…I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

This was obviously for the benefit of her sons, as she was, indeed, not sorry. Castiel could smell the distain rolling off her. She didn’t trust him. And why should she?

He stood, dislodging Dean’s hand before he could finish wiping all the blood from his skin, and squared his shoulders. He would not be in this woman’s presence on uneven ground, even if she was weaponless at the moment.

If she were to suddenly attack him, Castiel wondered which of them the brothers would help.

He decided he didn’t want to know.

He resettled his wings, folding them tight enough to cramp and hating everything about what was happening.

Nonetheless, he felt compelled to at least attempt to ease the tension and extend an olive branch. Sam and Dean did not need another reason to kick him out of the bunker when they had so many already. If he could sooth Mary’s dislike of him for a little while longer, tactically, it was in his best interest. 

“Understandable given that you have suddenly returned from the dead after thirty years. Resurrection, even when you are expecting it, can be a bit jarring.”

He glanced up at the door leading out into the woods beyond the bunker, trying not to give off the feel of a prisoner about to pull a file from his pocket.

Because Sam had that _look_ on his face. That “ _we’re going to talk even if it kills us_ ” look and was already sitting down at the table behind Castiel and Dean, a foreboding sense of determination in his normally soft brown eyes.

Castiel refused to turn his back on Mary and she, in kind, seemed unwilling to move close enough to Castiel to sit at the table. 

Briefly, something nudged at Castiel, telling him that the right thing to do in that moment might be to back down. But that just wasn’t in his nature. He twitched, making a solid effort to show her his back, but couldn’t manage it, instincts stopping him.

Making himself more vulnerable than he already was to the hunter that had just shot him wasn’t worth the small platitude for the brothers.

It just wasn’t.

After several long seconds of Castiel and Mary staring each other down, Dean’s shoulders slumped even farther, if possible. He couldn’t look his mother in the eye when he asked her to give them some space. 

She left without a word, retreating back into the dormitory wing.

* * *

Castiel stared up at the high vaulted ceiling of the war room, wishing he were anywhere, doing anything, other than this.

It was torture. 

He’d rather be stationed to watch over a boulder for the next million years.

He’d rather be on the end of Mary’s shot gun again.

He’d rather be talking to a mole rat.

Saying he’d rather be dead might be going a bit too far. But only just.

He could no longer fit comfortably into a chair – his wings were much too voluminous – but he had managed to curl them around his shoulders and wedge himself between the armrests. It’s not like he was going anywhere any time soon anyway.

Once, Dean had brought home a white paper bag for his dinner. It had been nearly translucent with grease stains and had a purple logo on the front that said ‘Taco Bell’.

Castiel felt like a taco, the way he was wedged into this chair.

He couldn’t help but be envious of tacos in that moment. Tacos were not sentient. They did not have to think or experience anything. They simply had to _be_ tacos until they were eaten.

He felt like heaving a great sigh, even though he didn’t need to breathe; even though he hadn’t _bothered_ to breathe in several minutes. Sometimes he forgot to, when he was busy wishing he was elsewhere.

Dean’s voice droned on in the background of his awareness.

Absently, Castiel reached over to his left wing to scratch at a few feathers that were out of place.

A hundred years must have passed since Sam and Dean had started talking.

“Cas, are you even listening?”

“Yes, of course I am.” Castiel tried smoothing down the feather that was out of place, but the shaft was bent and it would not go back. He plucked it out and tossed it on the table, scratching again to sooth the sting. That was odd, usually his feathers only came out so easily when he was close to a molt. He dearly hoped that wasn’t the case. His wings had only just been restored, how could they be molting already?

He chalked it up to having a rough week and chose not to think about it.

“Then what was I just talking about?”

He met Dean’s unimpressed gaze, fingers frozen in his feathers, and frantically reviewed the last few moments of the conversation.

He narrowed his eyes, “Angels.” 

Dean’s eyes narrowed in return. “Lucky guess,” he sneered.

It wasn’t lucky, or much of a guess, but Castiel let him have it.

Dean leaned back in his chair hard enough to have to hide a wince and folded his arms over his chest – one of many signals Castiel had learned meant that Dean was done talking now. Possibly for several days. He waited for the man to stand and storm off towards the kitchen in search of alcohol.

Instead, Dean glared moodily over at Sam and made a somewhat violent gesture in Castiel’s general direction. 

“ _You_ wanna try?”

He made an effort to pay attention. Sam sometimes knew how to talk so Castiel could actually understand.

“Cas,” Sam started, lacing his fingers together on the table and looking him dead in the eye. But unlike Dean, it did not come across as a challenge. “We just want to help you.”

Castiel glanced in Dean’s direction, wondering if that was what the man had been trying to say with his unfinished sentences and grunting. 

Honestly, Castiel sometimes wondered how far humans had really evolved.

He refocused on Sam. “Help me with what?”

Where Dean would have let his mouth fall open like he wanted to speak, and then clamp his jaw shut before he could, Sam’s stare remained fixed on him, unwavering and watching in a way that had Castiel sitting up straighter in his chair, tense.

Sam was _looking_ at him, and Castiel wondered how it was different from all the other times the man had looked at him. For one, he didn’t think Sam had ever maintained eye contact with him for this long, nor had he actually ever seemed to _see_ him. Not like this. Not like he could _actually_ see him. Like he _wanted_ to see him.

“Help you heal. Help you feel better. Just…help.”

“I…” he stared between them, all eyes shifting from one brother to the other and back, waiting for them to explain themselves even though he knew they wouldn’t. Because they never did. “…don’t understand.”

Identical looks of disappointment flashed across both their faces and the brothers shared one of those looks that meant they were having an entire conversation that would likely have gone right over his head even _if_ they had bothered to have it out loud.

He scowled.

Sam turned back to him, his gaze as determined as ever. “Cas, how do angels talk to each other? How do you communicate what you think and feel to other angels?”

Castiel blinked several times, frozen in his chair, utterly blindsided by the abrupt shift in direction.

“I’d like to know,” Sam continued gently, sincere. “If you’re comfortable telling me. Even if you’re worried I might not understand.”

“Why?” Castiel asked, immediately suspicious. He squeezed himself out of the chair, perching on the edge so he could free his wings and spread them a little, driven by an instinctual need to be ready to move quickly if the need arose. “Are angels trying to communicate with you?”

Sam’s eyes tracked the movement of his wings and then his face relaxed, the way it always did when he’d just solved some kind of puzzle. He hid it quickly, but Castiel was left more confused that ever. And frustrated. After all this time, why was it _still_ so difficult to read humans? Sometimes he felt as if he’d learned absolutely nothing over the last ten years.

Sam was leaning back in his chair now, folding his hands over his stomach like he had no intention of going anywhere any time soon. Or particularly quickly.

Though the shift in body language was abrupt, Castiel relaxed minutely, pulling his wings back to fold loosely at his sides. Evidently, whatever trouble the angels had been stirring up while Castiel was incapacitated, it was nothing too urgent. 

Before he could demand Sam tell him what angels had been trying to tell him – lies, most likely – Sam spoke first.

“So do the colors of your feathers mean anything in particular?”

Blindsided for the second time in as many minutes, Castiel stared. Dean was also staring at his brother, with an unreadable expression on his face. But he didn’t interrupt. Which was confusing, because that was the kind of question Dean would _normally_ interrupt, with a red face, stuttering at Sam to shut up.

With the way Sam was watching him now – like Castiel was a particularly obscure and fascinating tome he’d just discovered in the bowels of the bunker – Castiel wished for the first time that Dean _would_ derail the conversation.

As soon as he realized his coverts had started to rise under Sam’s gaze, he tried his best to flatten them, feeling heat spread through his face. Sam’s eyes tracked the movement of his feathers, his eyes lighting up with satisfaction.

“Stop staring at me,” Castiel ordered. Under the scrutiny, Castiel felt like his skin was crawling and his scapulars began to lift as well.

“But do they?” Sam pressed, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table. He wasn’t looking Castiel in the eye anymore, his gaze flicking this way and that over his wings. He seemed much more interested in how Castiel was _reacting_ to the question than he may be in the answer to it.

Praying for patience – and for the sudden ability to understand humans – Castiel stood and started pacing, feeling the open wound that was the sigil in his chest pull at the edges of his skin.

“The colors develop as our grace develops. It is like a fingerprint. They are unique and entirely dependant on our physiological and biological makeup and power output. No one angel has the same colors. Though they may look the same, the shades are different. I imagine the subtleties would be lost in the limited spectrum the human eye is capable of seeing.”

He stopped and braced his hands on the back of the chair he had vacated, opening his mouth to ask why Sam suddenly wanted to know about angels and the color of their wings but was, once again, interrupted before he could.

This time by Dean.

“I always thought they’d be all white.” Dean’s tone was overly thoughtful, and the constipated look he’d had on his face mere moments ago had vanished into something much more…calm. He and Sam shared another look, the corners of their mouths twitching.

“Yes, you _would_ think that,” Castiel deadpanned. It was an insult to anyone who knew to take it as one.

“I like the black, though. It’s badass looking.”

His coverts flared again under the praise and Castiel bit his tongue. Dean certainly wasn’t the first one to tell him his Hell scars were esthetically pleasing.

He felt the need to explain that there was nothing unique about them.

“Actually, Hellfire scars are the same color across every angel that survives it. This particular shade of black is the only shade some of us share. It might have been more common, if more of us had made it out of –“ He snapped his jaw closed, not wanting to open that particular can of worms at the moment.

He glanced at his right wing, eyeing the span of black somewhat wistfully, remembering the searing agony of hellfire turning his feathers to ash.

Such simpler times.

A brief look of curiosity mixed with something too close to pity for Castiel’s liking crossed Sam’s face.

He didn’t dare look at Dean.

Sam sighed, glancing at Dean contemplatively. “We could call Crowley? See if he can help us figure it out.”

Castiel’s attention snapped back to Sam and his wings flared in alarm, his scapulars spiking again, as if the King of Hell had suddenly materialized in the room instead of just their conversation.

“ _What?_ What are you _talking_ about?” Castiel snapped, feeling no small amount of alarm. He looked to Dean for help, but the man looked as unconcerned as ever, a stark contrast to his usual range of facial expressions any time Crowley’s name was mentioned. Surely, they could not be so _stupid_ as to call Crowley to ask about _angels_ instead of just asking the _angel_ standing before them. It was lunacy. And not even the usual lunacy born of desperation.

In fact, looking from one man to the next, Castiel suddenly realized the conversation was unnaturally ridiculous even for the Winchester brothers. They weren’t – _couldn’t_ be – serious. The situation didn’t call for it. It had felt as if he was missing entire parts of the conversation, but now he realised that wasn’t the case at all.

They were just saying things at random. Asking directly about his wings. About angels. About calling Crowley. 

Things they knew would get a reaction out of him.

They were trying to read his body language.

Trying to read his _wings_.

His wings sagged with the realization and he desperately tried to put a name to how it made him feel.

Confused mostly. And naked.

He didn’t like it.

Castiel stared at the brothers, frozen like a mouse that suddenly realized a cat had noticed him, unwilling to so much as twitch under their watchful gaze. They stared back, hungry for any microscopic tell they might uncover with their probing questions.

“Why are you doing this?” Castiel asked at length, he slowly pulled his wings in, as if moving slower would somehow make them less visible. 

He felt…trapped. Caged. Like he was something to be studied, poked, and prodded through the bars of a cage.

No human, and certainly not Sam or Dean, had ever shown this kind of interest in him.

For the first time he felt as if a solid line had been drawn between their species. A hard line.

This went beyond trying to garner a basic understanding of his angelic powers and how they might be useful. It went beyond the lingering looks when another reference soared over his head. It went beyond a joke aimed at biblical stereotypes at his expense.

This was something deeper and altogether more unsettling.

Sam and Dean wanted to be able to see him and read him the way his own species did.

And it was entirely unfair.

His grace pulsed, as if reacting to a threat, throbbing like a thumb he had just smashed with a hammer. He glanced down at the sigil, noting that his grace was no longer visible. It was healing already.

Over the course of the years he had known the brothers, they had made it _very_ clear that he was meant to behave as humanly as possible. That his angelic traits, instincts, and thoughts – everything that made him _him_ – was to be repressed and hidden away. 

And now they were asking for the opposite?

He sighed, exhausted, torn between slogging through the rest of the conversation and turning on his heal to flee the ridiculousness of it. 

“Why are you taking an interest in angels now?”

They both had the grace to look sheepish, but it was Sam that plucked up the courage to answer.

“We’re only interested in one angel, Cas, and that’s _you_.”

It became evident that no explanation was going to follow so Castiel leaned on the back of his chair again, feeling agitation and fatigue warring for attention within him.

“For a spell? A sigil? A translation? What, Sam? Just _tell_ me, these word games are exhausting and I did not have any energy to spare in the first pla -”

“Jesus Christ!” Dean suddenly snapped, surging to his feet and crowding so close to Castiel so suddenly that Castiel reflexively took a step back, wings flaring again, stance widening.

For a split second, his grace flashed in his eyes, sure that Dean had been about to attack him.

The hunter looked stricken, swallowed, but then ploughed on with determination.

“We’re _worried about you_ , Cas. We’re worried about your mental health. We’re worried about the fact that you hate yourself and think you’re no better than whatever weapon you can hammer yourself into for us. It makes us _sad_. _We’re_ sad because _you’re_ sad, Cas! We want to help you feel better because we want you to be happy but we don’t know _how_ because you’re an angel and angels don’t need the same things humans need to be healthy so we’re trying to ask you to tell us how to help!”

Dean was red faced and puffing, like he’d just used his shoulder to break down a very secure door.

Castiel was frozen again, and he looked to Sam instinctually.

“He’s telling the truth, Cas. We want to help you. We want you to tell us what you need. And…we want to talk to you more openly and directly but…it’s hard. We’re trying to figure out how to talk to you in a way you’ll understand better. We want to show you how much you matter to us; how much we care about you. And we want to understand you better too.”

For the first time in his very long life, Castiel’s head was empty. He felt as he had back at that gas station in Colorado. Like he’d just been banished and his head was full of static.

This…this wasn’t how their relationship worked.

He closed his eyes for a moment, felt his wings drooping at his back, and tried to rework Sam’s little speech into something that fit inside the parameters of his place in the Winchester’s lives. Parameters that the brothers had silently designated to Castiel over the last several years.

He came up empty handed.

“Cas?”

It was Dean’s voice that pulled Castiel’s eyes back open, sounding…worried? He couldn’t be sure. Castiel felt as if his perception of humans and what they were saying when they tried to communicate to him had been wrong since the dawn of man and he was only just now realizing it.

“Cas, what’s going on in that big brain of yours?” Dean chuckled, but it was a weak, nervous little thing.

“Humans are so…changeable. They ebb and flow like water. Smashing against the shore with destructive force one moment and then still as glass the next.” Castiel sighed. “I understand you no more than a mountain can understand the lake at it’s feet.” 

Sure, he could see the surface of the water when it glistened in the setting sun. He could see the waves rushing towards the shore, and sometimes he may even glimpse a fish or two jumping out of the water to catch a bug, hinting at the lake’s _true_ depth and complexity…

But the surface was all he would ever see, because, as the mountain, it was all he _could_ see.

Castiel stared at the wall over Dean’s head, wondering if there was any point to talking at all anymore. He was a mountain, his only voice the wind howling around his sky-bound peaks. And he was trying to hear what the minnows were saying? 

Castiel’s smile was sad.

Dean was suddenly in his line of sight and very close to his face. Castiel blinked his way back to the present conversation, resisting the urge to slap the man like a fly buzzing around his head.

“Cas, I know that look on your face. It’s the one you get when you’re checking out. I don’t know what kind of Holy bullshit your angel brain is spitting, but don’t listen to it. Ok? The three of us are going to figure this out _together_. And you’re not a mountain, ok? You’re an _angel_ –“

Castiel sighed, “An angel is not what you have decided they are in your head, Dean.”

“So what are they then?”

Castiel cocked his head to the side and narrowly caught a laugh between his teeth. Dean was staring at him challengingly, arms crossed over his chest in the way that meant he had planted himself on this pyre and was prepared to burn.

Behind him, Sam was still sitting at the table with his elbows resting on its weathered surface and his hands clasped in front of his mouth, attentive.

Castiel stared between their determined faces and felt his patience thinning.

“Fine. _Fine_. If you want to _truly_ understand what I am…then I will _show_ you.” The thought of having to try and explain with words what he looked like was laughable after the conversation they’d just had.

Even still, the thought of showing the brothers his true form when he already felt like…like an animal…

It turned his stomach. 

Dean looked as if he had been pushing against a door that had suddenly swung inward.

“But it will take some preparation.” Castiel cast a mild glare towards Dean, ignoring the fact that his vessel was tossing bile around like it was thinking of ejecting some. “I did not rescue you both from Hell – on separate occasions – just to burn your eyes out a few years later.”

Sam stood, obviously relieved that they had a direction to start walking in. “Just tell us what we need to do.”

“Well,” Castiel sighed in the face of his old friend: resignation. “The first thing we need to do is get this _barbaric_ binding off me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback usually motivates me to write and update!


	6. Chapter 6

Castiel stared down at the words scrawled across the ancient and crumbling page. With a sigh, he pushed the book away.

“Of course it was Norse.” Of course it was. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a calming breath. Still, he muttered an Enochian curse upon the Viking barbarians responsible for his current predicament. 

_Idiots_.

“What did you say?” Sam asked, a book open in his hands and an odd look on his face. He seemed amused hearing the angel muttering so vehemently in his mother tongue. There was probably no mistaking the intent behind them, even if he didn’t understand the words themselves.

Castiel stared across the library table, thoroughly _un_ amused. “Its not important.” 

Dean sipped his coffee obnoxiously loud.

Castiel rubbed his chest with a grimace, cursing, for the first time, his angelic ability to heal at a ridiculous pace even without access to his grace.

“Already?”

He ignored the question, assuming it was rhetorical. Humans loved those.

He couldn’t stop a grimace from contorting his face though, or stop his hand from drifting up to feel the closing edges of the cuts every few seconds. As the skin formed the thinnest of scabs, the sigil began to lose its power. 

Pulsing like a thready heartbeat, his grace was waking from its forced slumber. And with it, the binds woke too. 

Among other things.

The urge to pray was becoming stronger again, and he flicked his wing in irritation. For whatever reason, and by whatever forces – he was starting to doubt that force was his Father – he had been given this gift and he wished he could just be happy about it.

Instead, he was trying to fight his own instincts. Instincts his Father placed in him and every one of his siblings. Blind worship, even when He did not deserve it. A compulsion to follow orders, even when they were unjust. And not only an aversion to free will but a near inability to even comprehend it. But these were urges he had long since smothered. At least he thought he had. Why were they suddenly so strong?

A hand on his shoulder made him jump, and he shoved Dean away with his left wing out of reflex alone, already apologizing as he pulled the feathered arm back to his side and curled it protectively around his shoulder.

He realized that he had the back of his chair in a death grip, the other hand pressed to the sigil. Feeling the tremor in his body now, Castiel pressed his forehead to the inside of his wing and took a few calming breaths.

“I hate this,” he admitted to the hunters out loud. The easy way, with his eyes closed and his face pressed against the silky soft comfort of his feathers. Hoping that maybe it might take the weight of truth off his shoulder’s at least.

They didn’t apologize. They didn’t need to and Castiel had demanded they stop. If they hadn’t bound him, he would have killed them all. If Castiel had had better control of himself he wouldn’t have forced them to bind him. They kept trying to tell him otherwise. That it was their fault, that they should have tried to help him wade through the murky quagmire that was human emotion instead of waiting until it was too late.

Maybe it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Maybe it just _was_.

Still. He hated it.

He had never felt more vulnerable. More out of control. More _exposed_ than he had in the past however many days or weeks it had been. He should really check how much time had passed since Chuck and Amara had run off into the sunset. Though he couldn’t think of a reason why knowing would matter.

It stood to reason that maybe he should say these things out loud. The brothers had been insisting that they all say things that were personal and oftentimes deeply uncomfortable to hear. They were trying to communicate on a deeper level, they told him, and were trying to fix a lifetime of _not_ saying things by saying them all now. 

And it wasn’t just him they were talking to. He could tell they were saying all these uncomfortable things to each other as well. About things Castiel had no memory of. About things that had happened between the brothers long before Castiel had entered their lives.

At first it had seemed like they were trying to painfully and pointlessly reopen old wounds. But Castiel now suspected it was more like they were rebreaking a bone that hadn’t healed correctly so that they could set it. It was painful, but in the long run the bone would be much stronger than before.

“Cas…?”

Castiel peeled his hand away from the sigil by pure force of will and instead dragged the back of his trembling hand down the inside of his wing, letting the warmth and softness of his feathers seep into his skin and calm the shake.

He opened his mouth, and forced himself to speak as if a superior had demanded it of him.

“I find it difficult. This. Talking. Explaining things that I am feeling that I was not given the ability to understand because I was never meant to. I do not _like_ having my wings out here. I am…exposed. I am vulnerable and I _hate_ it. An angel’s wings are more than just…arms. They are our greatest weapon and our greatest weakness. We use them to communicate, to touch, to comfort, and to kill. There aren’t words in any language that can explain what it means to have lost them…let alone to have regained them. I…” he cast around for the best word to describe how he had been feeling. 

“I’m scared.” The realisation made him frown against his feathers, behind which he was still hiding. He couldn’t imagine having to say all this _and_ meet their eye. Shame was curling in his chest like a slimy, writhing snake. Some solider he was. Too afraid to even open his eyes.

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Sam said gently, the first to speak. “We can’t imagine what you’re going through, Cas, but remember that this is the safest place in North America.”

Castiel tried to hide his sudden grimace behind his wing but Sam caught it. The younger brother cleared his throat and exchanged a glance with Dean. “Right. Bird in a shoebox.”

Castiel bristled at the comparison, and at the evidence the brothers had been discussing him while he wasn’t around and comparing him to birds. Instead of lecturing them about the many reasons he was _not_ a bird, he chose to remind them of the difference between the bunker and a shoebox.

Moving so only half his face was hidden behind the edge of his wing, Castiel stared at Sam with one eye. “A concrete shoebox, that has been buried underground. That I am sharing with three hunters.”

There. He’d said it. 

He probably shouldn’t have but he was glad he did. If they really, _truly_ , wanted to understand his position in all this, then they needed to _hear_ that as well as understand it. 

He wasn’t convinced they would be able to manage the latter and he braced himself, holding Sam’s gaze. Often times humans told him they wanted him to do something and then got angry when he did it.

On the other side of his wing, out of sight, but no less present, Dean huffed. It was impossible to tell what that meant.

A myriad of emotions was pulling at Sam’s face but Castiel held his gaze. Knowing that his eyes were glowing, knowing that the half-healed sigil was still very stark in his chest. He shifted his wings, fluffed his feathers just enough for it to snag Sam’s eye, _willing_ him to understand.

The defeated way Sam’s shoulders suddenly slumped let Castiel know he did. He tried not to feel guilty when Sam’s eyes became glassy and the younger Winchester worried his lip between his teeth. They had told him to talk. They had told him to be honest.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” Sam seemed to struggle to get the words out, sounding like someone had a hand around his throat. “I never thought of it like that.” He looked like he had more to say, but he bowed his head and cleared his throat.

On the other side of his wing, Dean felt like a pillar of ice. Castiel imagined the ragged emotions and accusations likely swimming in his green eyes and, unable to bear it any longer, finally pulled his wing against his back and looked up.

Instead of the familiar, comfortable, anger – Castiel knew how to handle an angry Dean – there was only sadness, deep and profound, in the man’s eyes.

“Cas…” his name whistled weakly from Dean’s throat and the hunter cleared it aggressively, shaking his head to dispel something unwanted from his thoughts. “Cas, we would _never_ –.” Again he stopped. Again he shook his head. “You’re not a –“

“A what?” Castiel prompted after a moment of cloying silence. “A monster?” He felt his grace pulse, felt the binding tighten. He spready his wings a little and, for a moment, let his real voice come through. Just a little, just enough to drive his point home but not enough to rupture his vessel’s vocal cords. He wouldn’t be able to heal them. “I’m not something to be hunted?”

His words rumbled and cracked deep, like a boulder rolling down a mountain side.

Sam stood instinctively, Dean looked like he’d been about to take a step back and only just managed to stop himself.

A sickening slurry of satisfaction and disappointment churned in Castiel’s stomach. He folded his wings again and brought his voice back down to an octave that would spare the light bulbs over their heads.

“I’m not human. Not even something close to it. I think you two often forget that.”

He imagined forgetting that was harder now that his wings were visible and his grace was so damaged and angry that it hissed and bucked beneath his skin, trying to free itself from the binding. He knew they could see it drifting outside the confines of his vessel sometimes. 

Whenever the sigil’s power began to fade, Castiel found it almost impossible to keep track of his body. His _real_ body. He knew his eyes glowed an eerie blue, and the other day he’d looked down at his bare torso and saw dusty light drifting over his skin like sow drifting over a road. To _his_ eyes, it was easy enough to see the shape of his own feathers in the wispy light. Not whole feathers, they were much too large for that, but the grain of a single plume, or the edge of a shaft here and there. He doubted the humans noticed such details. Something Castiel was grateful for. It hinted at the monstrous size of his real body, something he was sure would unsettle them even further. 

All that, and his wings on top of it. He likely looked the least human he ever had to them and wondered what they thought now that they were forced to see him like this – so far from what they were used to and yet still so far from what he actually was.

He wished, not for the first time, that the binding had at least _hidden_ his grace. But it was a bit like tying a string around a lightbulb. It did nothing to block the light.

He refocused his attention. He’d started this uncomfortable conversation, he may as well let _all_ the worms out of the can.

…or however that saying was supposed to go.

“You’ve hunted me before,” he reminded them carefully, shifting his wings and shoulders into something a little less hostile. “More than once, even.”

“That was different,” Dean countered defensively. Castiel could see anger building behind the man’s eyes. “You were…you were…” he flailed a hand in frustration, unable to paint the picture he wanted Castiel to see.

“What was I, Dean, that I am not now?” 

Compelled, now, to drive the point home as thoroughly as possible without _actually_ showing them his true form – not that he could at the moment – Castiel stopped blinking. Stopped breathing. Turned himself into the marble statue he had taken so many long years learning to soften. For _them_. To be more like _them_. To make _them_ more comfortable.

His voice swept through the room like a breeze, rustling the pages of open books. He threw his words into the air around them, keeping his vessels lips sealed for added emphasis. They had _no idea_ how many ways he moved his vessel just to make them feel more comfortable.

“ _I am now what I have_ always _been. I am now what you have hunted in the past. I am now what you have called your friend. Your_ family. _What would you need to see from me now to decide that I need to be exterminated again? My claws? My teeth? My eyes? My halo? What will be the thing that you decide is one non-human attribute too many? I am now what I will be for all eternity. I am a_ seraph _.”_

The books were swept closed and chairs skidded a few inches across the floor with a powerful beat of his wings. Castiel took a moment to reign himself in. He’d been…unaware just how heavily this issue had been weighing on him. But the pounding of his vessel’s heart in tune with his grace was…revealing. 

Shocking.

Alarming, actually. 

Though, really, after all that had happened the last few weeks, finding out he was developing yet more emotions didn’t register as important.

Still. They’d snuck up on him and he didn’t like it.

Dean looked torn between anger, nausea, and something close to heartbreak. His teeth were clenched so hard Castiel was surprised he managed to pry them open and speak. 

“If you’re talking about the time you ate all those souls…you had to be stopped, Cas.”

“I agree,” Castiel shrugged, “But would you have tried to kill me if I was a human and had caused such chaos?”

A muscle in Dean’s jaw rippled, “We don’t deal with humans, that’s what the cops are for!”

“Dean…” Sam admonished softly, looking stricken.

Dean blinked, stunned by his own words. “I mean…I didn’t mean –“

Castiel swallowed, closing his eyes against a lance of pain in his chest that had nothing to do with the binding or the sigil. “Yes, you did. And its true, in any case.” Castiel gave him an out, but the words stung. He _wasn’t_ human. Which meant he was – in a hunter’s mind – a creature. 

An animal. 

Something inside him felt like it was icing over and an unfamiliar prickling sensation behind his eyes made him blink. 

He looked away. He wanted to ask if Sam had done the same, if Sam had swallowed all the souls in Purgatory to try and save the world and what was left of his family…would Dean have asked Death to murder him? Would he have tried to kill Sam himself? He felt sick at the idea of asking it out loud. He already knew the answer.

He cleared his throat, there was no point in dwelling on something he already knew. Even if the confirmation was upsetting. 

Devastating, really.

But it never felt good to have your worst fears confirmed.

He made an effort to dust off some steely angelic walls and slammed them in to place like a makeshift wind block. His skills were rusty, and the storm of emotions were still trying to blow him over…but some of the sharper pain stopped. For the moment.

Of course, he thought numbly, he _would_ be just human enough to feel emotions and all the pain they brought, but not human enough to fit in with their species.

He’d gotten the worst of both worlds. But what else was new?

“Cas…”

He ignored Dean’s voice, rough with some emotion Castiel didn’t bother trying to decipher, and instead got the conversation back on track, because he had more to say.

“You’re right. You don’t ‘deal’ with humans.” Finally, now that he had numbed himself somewhat, Castiel looked up and met Dean’s eyes. The hunter looked ill, and was leaning heavily against the table. “Not long ago I was as close to human as an angel can get.” 

Castiel let the silence settle.

Sam quickly swiped a hand across his eye and remained silent, either too upset or too overwhelmed to contribute to the conversation.

Dean was visibly struggling. “That…that was different. Sam was -”

“I know, Dean. I understand. But let me surmise for you: either I am too powerful and need to be stopped or I am too weak and a liability. Where exactly on the spectrum of usefulness do I need to reside so that I may continue to be the family you say I am? Do _you_ even know? Or does it fluctuate depending on your mood and the current state of the universe? You don’t want me the way that I am, nor do you want me the way that I am not. I don’t blame you. I have caused nothing but problems since I pulled you from hell. I only wish that you would stop pretending,” he eyed them both, feeling like his heart was leaking onto the floor, “For your sake as well as mine.”

He thought of the few times the brothers had called him family and only now wondered if they were saying it just to get him to do what they wanted. How many times had he been dissuaded from his battle plans – plans he knew could work – because one of the brothers had asked him to? How many times had he turned away from his own family for them? How many times had he fallen for them?

Why?

For all the many years he had known them, he’d listened silently while they talked about his kind with distain, hatred, and disgust and had naively believed he was different, separate, from them. Still, it always hurt to hear. Yes, heaven had it’s issues, but could Sam and Dean really claim to be any better? And with how fully their hatred for his kind – and any non-human species – permeated their lives, how could Castiel ever think that they could see anything other than just another angel when they looked at him?

Castiel pulled a calming breath through his nose and recentred his focus through a stab of pain. The bindings were getting tighter the more upset he allowed himself to become and his walls were already coming down as the storm in his head and heart gained strength.

If he was going to survive this, he’d have to practice putting those walls up and fortifying them. It wasn’t that long ago he’d been a master at it. Perhaps it wasn’t too late for him to regain the mental fortitude of a full angel. A _real_ angel. He had let himself slip, had let himself get swept out into the sea of emotions that came with falling. He had thought it was a good thing, feeling all these things, being more human. But why did he want to be like these humans so badly anyway? It wasn’t who he was. It wasn’t _what_ he was. 

Would leaving the brothers behind even be all that difficult if he could once again become the soldier he had been?

He willed the walls to hold just a little longer. “I have tried so very hard since I met you to soften the edges of my otherness. I used to hate the look you both would get on your face when another reference went over my head or I said something or did something that you thought was odd. ‘ _Breathe more, Castiel. Sit down, Castiel. Don’t stare, Castiel. Blink more, Castiel. Loosen up, Castiel. Eat something, Castiel. Don’t just disappear, Castiel. Don’t just show up, Castiel_. On and on and _on_ it goes!” 

He shook his head, gasped as the bindings tried to wring him dry, and forgot everything else he wanted to get off his chest. He flicked his blade into his hand and brought it to the fragile pink skin now covering the sigil.

Why was his hand shaking already? Why were his legs shaking?

The walls came down, quickly and violently, his focus scattered in the storm, and he sank to his knees. Bringing the point of his blade back up, he braced it with his other hand, but it too was shaking.

The terrible conversation faded away and his awareness condensed into a single point of focus: redrawing the sigil before he lost himself under the crushing strength of the binding.

There was a hand suddenly within his field of vision, reaching for his blade.

Castiel had spent millennia dodging enemy angel blades and doing his best to keep his own out of other hands – lest that hand be driving towards his vital bits – so when he quickly pulled it from the hunter’s reach and flared his wings behind him with a snarl, it was purely instinctual and should not have been taken personally.

Of course it absolutely _was_ taken personally and the look on Dean’s face was the same one he’d had that time Castiel told him he’d accidentally put diesel in the Impala instead of gasoline.

His face drained of color, and for a moment he just stared down at Castiel like he was a stranger.

Perhaps, if Castiel had not just spent the better part of an hour talking about how he was a little worried – ok a _lot_ worried – deep down, that being trapped in a box with hunters might end badly for him – hell one of them had already shot him – then all that fear wouldn’t be simmering just below the surface and he might have been able to control his instincts better. 

He knew Dean wasn’t reaching for his blade so he could stab Castiel in the heart.

He _knew_ that.

He _did_.

And he even mostly believed it.

Instead, he glared up at the hunter through grace-blown eyes, clutching his blade to his chest like a housewife might clutch her pearls. If her pearls were the only mortal weapon that could end her entire existence. 

His wings arched out to either side, which would have been more intimidating if he hadn’t still been on the floor, half-frozen in a scramble to get away.

Dean’s eyes were swimming with a lot of things Castiel likely could not decipher even if he had the energy to try.

The hunter held his hands up as a sign of peace and took several steps back. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to…to grab for it, I just,” he cleared his throat, the sound jagged, while he ran a hand down his face, “I just wanna help. I can see your hands shaking and I know the lines gotta be clean.” Another swipe, at his eyes this time, followed by a hollow, broken laugh. “But hey, I get it. You don’t want a hunter carving stuff into your chest with one of the few things that can kill you. ‘Specially since it’s my fault you even have to –“

Dean’s voice chose that moment to finally fail him.

Over across the table, speaking like someone stepping out onto a barely frozen lake, Sam eased his way into the conversation as he made his way around the table, all the while maintaining eye contact with Castiel who, try as he might could neither move his legs to stand nor get control of his breathing.

Frantically, he tried to put the walls back up but they seemed to have disappeared all together, blown away.

“We’re not gonna hurt you, Cas,” Sam reminded him, swallowing heavily before continuing. “You’re safe with us. You can trust us. Let us help you.”

Shame flared behind his ribs in a cold, quiet, explosion. He hated that Sam felt the need to say that. He hated it even more that a growing part of him didn’t believe him.

Instinctively, Castiel dipped his shoulder when Sam took another step closer, moving his blade just a few more millimetres away from the hunter’s hands and hating himself for it.

The bonds squeezed again. He groaned, doubling over, and braced his forearms against the floor. 

He’d waited too long. 

He felt his wing tips drooping towards the ground and let them fall, the feathers fanning out across the tiled floor, and rode another angry wave of pain.

Sam’s giant hand was on his wing, the touch hesitant. But the weight of it was…surprisingly comforting. Much like Dean’s touch had been. He focused on it instead of the feeling of being crushed under an ever-growing mountain.

He wanted to tell them that it felt like the binding was coming back stronger every time the sigil healed. He wanted to tell them that was concerning for a number of reasons that he could not remember at the moment. But as soon as the thought came to him, it was gone, his focus pulled incessantly back to that crushing forced wrapped all around him.

It would drive him mad, eventually. He was certain of it. Could feel his mind slipping harder and faster each time the snare snapped closed around him.

Sam was speaking, his words soft and gentle and slow.

At that moment, the magical ropes around his angelic body suddenly squeezed more violently than they ever had before and his world momentarily went black, his awareness condensing down to only the places where the binding was touching his real body, which seemed to be everywhere. No inch of him felt like it was free. White hot, dragging against his flesh and feathers like sandpaper, and squeezing with unimaginable strength, Castiel was suddenly, vividly, reminded of the one and only time he had met the World Serpent. 

It had been coiled around the peak of a mountain, partially obscured among the clouds, concealed well enough that Castiel hadn’t even been aware it was there until he was flying alongside an eye twice as wide as his wingspan. The oblong pupil had narrowed, watching him, and it had suddenly felt as if he was falling.

He fled.

The rumbling sounds of the mountain coming to life behind him had been terrifying. The drag of the serpent’s body over the mountainside had sounded like planets colliding; a deep rumbling and crushing of stone as chunks of rock the sizes of villages were torn away, tumbling down into the valleys below.

He’d only looked back once, to see if the Serpent was following him, to see if he would soon be swallowed whole. 

He saw only a great, fat curve of the Serpent’s body, scales gleaming like polished crystals, as it slithered between the clouds and retreated further into the mountains. 

The encounter had had been brief and unsettling. Angels were high on the food chain, but there were many creatures above them. Castiel had had the distinct impression that, had the Serpent been peckish, Castiel would have made a fine snack.

The strength behind these bindings was what he had fearfully imagined being caught in the grip of the Serpent's coils might feel like. He hadn’t been able to shake his imagination as he fled. Something primal conjuring the images to urge him to flee faster, even though it had barely shown a passing interest in his presence. 

But now, something was different. Something had changed. It no longer felt like he was being pressed in the coils of the great snake, but like he was trapped in its jaws. 

He wasn’t sure how long he lay, instinctively frozen, as if the Serpent had snatched him out of the sky and was only waiting for him to start struggling before he pierced the angel with his fangs.

Eventually, around the edges of his laser-like focus, Castiel heard four distinct words.

_“Castiel, look at me!”_

As if giving him the chance to obey, the pressure receded. He sat up, willing to do anything in that moment to keep those jaws from snapping closed around him again. He forced his eyes open and locked them on to Dean’s. 

The jaws stayed away, but he imagined he could feel hot breath, as humid a jungle air, radiating behind him like a threat. And still, as ever, the searing drag of the binding across his skin lingered.

Dean’s mouth was moving, and slowly the words tumbled out in slow motion, hitting Castiel’s ears like the distant rumble of an approaching thunder storm.

Dean was telling him to breathe, to relax, that it was ok. His vessel was tensed to the point of being stone-like, so he obeyed again and sagged with relief. His energy, what little of it he’d had, leaving him as the binding eased back just enough to allow him to regain his senses.

The spell was rewarding him. For obeying.

Disgust flooded him.

Instead of the floor, there was a warm body there to catch him and, judging by the size of it, it was Sam’s. 

Sam maneuvered his way under Castiel’s limp right wing, letting it drape over his shoulders while he snagged an arm around Castiel’s waist to hold him up.

When he finally managed to register what his eyes were seeing, it was Dean kneeling in front of him, looking pained and holding the angel blade in his hand. He hadn’t even felt them pry it from his hand. 

Dean was far enough away that, even if he stretched, the blade still would not have reached Castiel. 

He still startled seeing it flash under the lights.

As soon as he moved, there was a threatening squeeze from the binding and he froze in Sam’s hold.

“It’s ok, Cas,” Sam said, trying to gentle his voice even as he tightened his arm around Castiel’s waist and grabbed his shoulder, pressing Castiel against him to keep him steady. “You’re ok, he’s just going to redraw the sigil. That’s all, we promise. Remember where you are. You’re in the bunker, you’re _safe_.”

He _was_ safe. Relatively speaking. Despite the fears he’d confessed to them, _logically_ , he knew that this was the safest place and the safest people he could find himself with.

He forced himself to breathe, having to fight hard against the turbulent waters muddying his mind to do so, and let himself lean in to Sam, grateful for how they both ignored the way he curled his fist into the flannel shirt under his hand. It was warm and soft and something to hold on to while he tried not to let it show how uncomfortable he was that Dean was inching closer. 

It helped that the hunter was looking at him like he was some kind of wild animal that was as likely to bolt as he was to try and rip out his throat. It gave him the drive to prove the man wrong. So he fought his instincts and held still.

Though he watched Dean’s hands _very_ closely.

Dean made quick work of the sigil, though his frown deepened every time Castiel failed to bite back a gasp of pain. His green eyes traced the tip of the blade as it cut just deep enough to bring a well of light spilling over the edges, reflecting the man’s ever turbulent emotions.

Halfway through, Castiel let his head fall back to rest against Sam’s chest and closed his eyes, having little other choice than to trust that Dean would finish the sigil without incident. He couldn’t have fought back if he wanted to. The binding would stop him. 

He could tell the moment the sigil was complete. His grace stuttered like a flame in the wind and then faded; receding from the searing coils of the bonds like a kicked dog moving to the back of its cage.

It took everything he had to clench his teeth around the sob of loss trying to claw its way from his throat. Despite his care, a tear carved a hot track down his cheek. Hands still shaking, he ran the tips of his fingers over his throat, unable to help himself.

The World Serpent receded into the mountains.

“It’s ok, Cas,” Sam whispered from somewhere that sounded higher up than he probably was. “You’re ok, you’re ok, just take a minute to breathe.”

Castiel did just that, letting Sam take his weight and making his lungs expand and contract. Even though he didn’t need to, it somehow helped calm the rush of blood in his ears. 

“Your grace isn’t gone, it’s just hidden.”

 _Yes, that’s right_ , Castiel reminded himself again. Not gone. It only _feels_ like it’s gone. But it’s not. It’s still there. He was _fine_.

He didn’t have to think so hard about breathing now. At his side, Sam was becoming a warm and much more solid presence and Castiel pushed himself away to sit up on his own with great effort. Memories, from millions of years ago, floated into the back of his mind, of a pile of limbs and feathers and softness and warmth and safety...

But it was gone again the next moment.

He pulled his wing from where it had been draped over Sam’s shoulder and curled both around his shoulders as best he could while sitting on the floor. It took him a moment longer to realize his eyes were still closed and opened them.

“Thank you,” he meant to say with more conviction; it came out as little more than a shaky whisper. 

‘A’ for effort, as Dean would say.

“We waited too long that time,” Dean mumbled. He was ten feet away – as if he might have finally caught on that being close to an angel with an angel blade in his hand might be stressful for said angel – carefully whipping Castiel’s blade clean with a cloth. And carefully not looking at Castiel. “It’s getting worse isn’t it?”

Castiel glance over at Sam still sitting beside him, noted the concerned press his lips and the wide, brown eyes watching him, and reminded himself that they were trying to _not_ lie to each other now. No matter how uncomfortable.

“Yes, it’s getting worse. Something has changed. I…it feels different now. Stronger. Worse.”

Dean still didn’t look up. The blade was clean now, but he kept running the cloth over it all the same.

“As soon as the sigil weakens, the bonds…they don’t just reappear, it’s like they’re trying harder each time to crush me. It feels…angry.” Castiel swallowed, unable to come up with a suitable word to describe the terror and pain of this particular spell. “I’ve been bound before but…not like this. Nothing has _ever_ felt like this.”

“When were you bound before?” Sam asked gently.

“Naomi. When I wouldn’t keep still.”

Dean set his blade carefully on the table, where it gleamed under the lights overhead like the supernatural object that it was.

Castiel took a deep breath, relishing the freedom to do so. “But those were clean. Painless. More like paralysis than anything else. This one…it gets to the point where I can’t even think properly. It’s…” he swallowed his pride, “It’s terrifying. And it gets there faster and faster each time the sigil fades. Have...have you ever heard of the World Serpent?” Because really, if they knew what Jormungandr was, he could just say it feels like being clamped in his jaws and crushed in his coils. Instead of trying to _describe_ how that felt.

If Sam and Dean were angels, Castiel could _show_ them what the binding was doing to him.

They both shook their heads and Castiel didn't elaborate. He did not have the energy to relive that memory a second time.

Silence for a moment, and then Sam’s large hand was pressing against the top of his wing. When Castiel offered a small, grateful smile, the weight of Sam’s hand settled more fully.

“Can you tell us why you keep touching your throat like that?”

His heart stuttered in his chest. “Oh…yes, um. Metatron – he – when he –“

For the first time in a very long time, Castiel felt himself unable to speak. Memories of Metatron restraining him with gleaming metal cuffs invaded his memory. His breath had smelled awful. His giggles had been even worse. He’d never felt more helpless in his entire existence as he had when the scribe had leaned over him with such glee and cut him open. He’d been nothing to Metatron. Just a useless animal that he’d needed a piece of for his recipe. And he’d tied Castiel down and taken it so easily.

And then tossed him away like a used carcass.

Someone was stroking his wing.

It was nice.

He chose to focus on it instead of Metatron’s twisted grin.

Dean was sitting cross-legged in front of him, Castiel hadn’t even noticed him sit down, his expression grave. He wore that same expression so often these days that Castiel worried it might be permanent.

It was Sam, still sitting close enough to Castiel’s side that he could feel the man’s warmth, that was carefully and methodically petting his wing. 

He wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that they had figured out that it was comforting to him. Angels weren’t supposed to need comfort, where they? He didn’t care, he was too tired. He looked at the empty space next to him and decided it was a good enough spot to have a nap but before he could fully pitch himself sideways, Sam’s hand left his wing and caught him under the arm, keeping him upright.

Castiel threw a very mild and likely ineffective glare in his general direction before remembering he’d yet to answer their question. He only just stopped his hand halfway to his throat, but both the brothers’ noticed it all the same.

“Metatron –“

“You don’t have to explain, Cas,” Dean told him, voice soft and eyes glassy. “We know.”

“But I didn’t even tell you.” Though he was relieved, he wasn't sure he could have gotten the words out anyway.

“It’s ok, you didn’t have to. You’re literally falling over. If you want, you can tell us about it later, when you’re feeling better. Come on, you need some rest. We’ll help you up. C’mon. One, two, three!”

The brothers lifted him from each side and held him steady until Castiel was sure his shaking legs would support him.

“Gotta say, buddy, I thought you’d be way heavier with those gigantic wings.”

He blinked, staring down the long hallway that led to the dorms. It seemed an impossible distance. “My bones are hollow.”

“…right.”

The atmosphere between the three of them was so heavy that even Castiel was acutely aware of it. He thought he would have regretted saying everything he had. He’d held those insecurities so closely for so long.

But there was something dismally freeing about having those insecurities confirmed. Maybe…maybe he could move on now. Move on to what, he wasn’t sure, but he felt as if – despite the literal magical chains that were binding him – he had been set free from a captivity he hadn’t been aware of.

It left him feeling oddly hollow inside. But he often felt hollowed out these days. Like someone had sliced him open and scooped out all his insides.

He pushed it aside for now, focusing on just making it to his bed. He managed to struggle down the hallway unassisted, though both brothers hovered close by, and finally, he reached his designated room and the illusion of security it brought him.

Passing through the door, Castiel found, to his confusion, that his bed had been removed from the room. In its place, three mattresses had been laid on the floor, and what had to be every free linen and pillow in the entire bunker had been laid on top. 

A nest. They had built him a nest.

“We uh…thought it might be more comfortable,” Dean fumbled, breaking the delicate silence. “Since, you know…your wings are so awesome and huge and everything. That little bed was pretty small. So…um, yeah…”

Dean offered him a shy but genuine smile when Castiel dared look at him. On his other side, Sam offered the same. 

It was an undeniably caring gesture from the brothers. But Castiel couldn’t help but feel a filament of suspicion. Not after the conversation they’d just had. He felt guilty for the feeling, but the guilt did nothing to stop it. 

For now, he shoved all that aside and threw up some feeble walls. Too much had happened in the last hour and he was too exhausted. He could barely think straight, let alone analyze whether his thoughts and emotions made rational sense.

He was – he scowled – too emotional to logically evaluate the conversation and how he felt about it’s revelations. He needed to rest before he did anything else.

Thanks to the brothers, he had a proper place to do so. He felt them trail him in to the room and felt their eyes on his back as he took the wobbly step over the ridge of blankets, flaring his wings for balanced when he wobbled a bit too much. 

“Thank you,” he nearly moaned as he sank into the ridiculous pile of soft sheets and pillows. Shamelessly, he nuzzled down into the nest, wiggling his way between pillows and blankets until he was surrounded on all sides by softness, then curled himself into a ball inside his wings.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he told them again, for good measure. Later, when he had the energy and unconsciousness wasn’t creeping up on him like a wave, he would thank them properly. For now, those two words would have to do.

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Just for funsies, here is a lil gif of the World Serpent from God of War:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umm...so some of you may noticed I added a Cas/Dean tag. It's gonna be super duper slow burn and there won't be any smut...but, romantic feels will be had between them fo sho. Anyways....tell me what you think of this chapter! The World Serpent stuff just came to me while I was editing it. But I liked writing that little bit so kept it in.


	7. Chapter 7

GUYS! Ella has made some absolutely stunning art for this story! [Please go check out their insta!](https://www.instagram.com/ellabrennanbutler/)

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“So the nest turned out to be a good idea.”

Dean grunted, heat creeping up his neck. He took another sip of the tea he wished was whiskey, wondering why doing something nice for his friend made him feel so embarrassed. That didn’t seem…normal. Usually, he would have drowned that question with alcohol – which also didn’t seem normal.

The ‘nest’ had been his idea. After watching Cas try to curl up on that standard twin mattress with his wings as big as they were…well. It couldn’t have been comfortable and he doubted angels were meant to take their rest in beds. He wasn’t trying to think of angels as birds, since it obviously irked said angel, but there _was_ a certain undeniable…likeness. And if nests worked for birds then surely, they could work for other winged species.

Cas had seemed impossibly, profoundly, grateful for the gesture and Dean desperately hoped it eased at least some of the anxiety he’d confessed to having about how out of place he felt in their lives.

It had taken them all of twenty minutes to put together, and Cas had reacted like they had done something huge. It was sobering, to realize just how low the bar had been set for them, and that such a simple gesture had shocked the angel so much.

It was a good start, but Dean wasn’t fooled in to thinking it would help with all the other stuff Cas had confessed. He didn’t know what _would_ help with that. If anything even could.

He glared down in to his mug of sorely inadequate peppermint tea. 

Peppermint tea, Sam had assured him, was supposed to help calm his stomach. But despite the fact that he was on his third cup, every time Dean thought about how Cas had looked at him a few hours ago – like he was _truly_ worried Dean might hurt him – his stomach heaved, sloshing the good-for-nothing tea around in his gut. 

Cas had looked in to his eyes and there had been real fear there. He’d told them being in the bunker with three hunters scared him. It had been hard to hear and Dean immediately tried to convince himself that he just misunderstood what Cas meant. 

There was no misunderstanding Cas’ expression when he’d realised his blade was in Dean’s hand.

It was funny, in a morbid kind of way, that Dean had literally been stabbed in the chest before and it hadn’t hurt nearly as bad as seeing Cas look up at him with that _look_ on his face.

Because other people had looked at him with that same expression, right before he’d killed them. Which, for a normal person, would be a logical reason to feel nauseous. But that wasn’t what was bothering him. 

No, it was the fact that those ‘other people’ weren’t actually _people_. They were vampires, werewolves, wendigos, various forgettable monsters…and angels. So many angels. Some of them had died angry, rage in their eyes even after Dean had speared them on the end of a borrowed angel blade. But most of them…most of them all had the same flash of shock, sometimes confusion, right after he landed the fatal blow. Like they didn’t _understand_. But the fear always took over in that moment where they realized what was about to happen.

Cas had confessed that being trapped in the bunker with hunters was making him nervous and Dean had immediately been outraged. Until Cas had looked up at him with the same expression so many of his brothers and sisters had before Dean mercilessly killed them. Without a thought. Without feeling anything at all. Because they were angels. It wasn’t like he was killing a _human_. And angels, vampires, werewolves, and whatever else didn’t matter. Not like humans mattered.

Carefully, he set his mug on the table, his hand trembling and chest shuddering with the sudden revelation. 

He understood. He _understood_ why Cas was uncomfortable, why he was _scared_. How could he not be? He was bound by painful magic, powerless, and locked in a little box with three people who killed supernatural beings for a living. Dean wondered, after everything, how he could have thought that Castiel the _Angel_ could ever feel safe around them, especially when he was as vulnerable as he was now. 

Castiel had had to _watch_ them slaughter angels. Had he ever wondered if he might die by their hands one day? Dean supposed he didn’t have to. 

Castiel heard how they talked about angels. Had he assumed the brothers were talking about him as well whenever they had something nasty to say about angels? There had always been a little frown on his face, but he never said anything, never called them on it. But now…now Dean was reading that frown a different way. Memories of talking shit about angels, saying he wished they’d all die, calling them all the things he had called them, gloating about killing them…that frown on Castiel’s face had been there every time. 

Sure, Castiel had killed his own kind as well. But it had broken him in a way Dean was worried might never heal.

Racking his brain now, he couldn’t come up with any reasons why Cas _should_ trust them. What had they done to make him feel like he was part of their family? Said it out loud, once, maybe twice, in the heat of whatever crisis was happening at the time?

Dean swallowed a swell of bile, trying to intimidate his mug of tea into morphing into a tumbler of whisky. 

“We agreed,” Sam reminded him from across the table, without even looking up from his book.

“I _know_ ,” Dean sighed, looking away from the mug. No more alcohol for a while. Cas needed them both to be at their best, mentally and physically, and they – Sam – had decided alcohol was not conducive to a mentally healthy household when those in it were as damaged as they were.

Sam was right, but that didn’t make it any less annoying. In fact, it made it _more_ annoying. With his usual crutch having been whipped out from under him, Dean was left with…tea and his own budding ability to psychoanalyse himself.

Pushing away the memories of all the times he had failed Cas and the burgeoning dread that he may never be able to gain the angel’s trust - or if he even deserved it - Dean instead thought back to his small victory.

After seeing the nest, there had been an initial blink of confusion and then a rush of gratitude in Cas’ eyes. The warmth had been so obvious that it seemed to have spread to Dean, leaving him feeling like Cas had given him a hug even though they weren’t touching. And, he didn’t know if it was because Cas’ defenses were so low, Dean was sure he saw the crisp glow of grace in his eyes infuse with gold for just a split second.

He tried not to worry about it. A color as rich and warm as that gold was _good_. It was a gut feeling, something Dean just _knew_. 

Maybe it was another way angels communicated. 

Sam had told him once that when a telepathic man had looked at Cas all he could see was ‘colors’. As soon as he had the energy, he was definitely going to look in to it. But for now, the human encyclopedia across the table would do.

“Do you think color is important to communicating with angels?” he asked his brother aloud. Sam always had weird insight into weird shit. 

Sam blinked from across the table, “What do you mean?”

“Well…Cas said no two angels have the same color feathers and that the color of their feathers is shaped by their grace. And remember that guy? The one you said tried to read Cas’ mind but all he saw was colors? Well, when we helped him to his room earlier and he saw the…the nest or whatever, I saw his eyes turn gold a little bit. Like not his actual eye balls, but his grace. I mean, it was a color, and color shouldn’t feel like anything, but…I dunno. It felt warm or good or…something. Do you think…does that make sense?”

Sam leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful. “As much as any of this makes sense. It certainly doesn’t make any _less_ sense.” He took a moment to rub the palms of his hands into his eyes, hard. “I’m not really sure what to do here, Dean. We didn’t have many books on angels to begin with and I’ve been through all of them three times over. There’s nothing in any of them besides how to summon, trap, and kill them.”

Dean winced. Was that all humans had bothered to learn about Cas’ species? How to snare, enslave, and dispose of them? 

He couldn’t judge, up until now that was all he’d learned about angels too.

“Nothing else on the binding?”

Sam shook his head. “Just that one page we had that I showed to Cas. I ordered all the Sagas I could find online but there are so many of them…It’ll take _weeks_ to just read through them all, let alone start cataloguing information that might be useful. If there even _is_ anything useful in them. Which seems unlikely because besides that one page with the spell on it I can’t find _any_ mention of it anywhere. And there’s probably some obscure one’s I don’t even know exist. Not to mention not all of them have been translated and I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly an expert in ancient Norse languages so it’ll take time to translate them as well.” Sam sighed, becoming more agitated with every listed obstacle they faced. “We need to do something else. There has to be something we can do for him _now_. Dean, that look on his face earlier -”

“Sam-“ Dean sighed, sounding as annoyed as he felt. He couldn’t deal with any more negativity at the moment. He _needed_ to hear something good. Because all he could see was the fear in Cas’ eyes when he realized Dean was holding his blade. All he could feel was the stab of pain in his chest hearing Cas basically admit he felt like rabbit in a den of lions. 

Dean had felt like a predator looming over injured prey and he hated it.

He’d never had cause to examine the feeling of power killing monsters had given him and he didn’t think he was ready to examine it now. Not after the day they just had. He needed something _positive_ to focus on for a bit. Just until the heaving in his stomach subsided.

Sam, agitated, stared at him hopelessly. “What, Dean? This is going to take too long, longer than Cas has. What if this thing is meant to _kill_ the angel it’s bound?”

“That,” Dean swallowed, “That doesn’t make sense. Why would you bind an angel just to slowly kill it? You’d bind an angel to _capture_ it. So, we just need to figure out why someone would want to capture _and_ subdue an angel.”

His stomach twisted, feeling sick with just the thought of getting in to a head space where Cas was some creature to be caught in a snare. A headspace Cas already believed they were in.

Sam shrugged, looking lost and frustrated, but casting around for ideas anyway. “To…to study them? To get information? Maybe the Norse people worshipped them or thought they were gods?” He frowned, “No, that doesn’t make sense, they wouldn’t forcibly abduct and enslave their gods. Maybe as a sacrifice _to_ a god?”

Dean felt like he was circling a viable idea and with every new image Sam conjured, Dean found himself picturing Vikings. Blood-thirsty, power-hungry, and with the influence of the old gods thrumming through their veins. What could people like the Vikings want from an angel bad enough to not only create a binding to enslave it, but to risk annihilation to capture it? After all, an angel would not take such treatment lightly. If they failed, the angel would certainly slaughter them in retribution for even trying.

Suddenly it clicked.

“A weapon,” he said aloud, peppermint tea failing him again.

Sam stopped mid-ramble, blinking before a knowing look settled on his face and he nodded somberly. “That…yeah, that seems most likely, doesn’t it? What better way to have the edge against all your enemies than to weaponize the universe’s most powerful and efficient soldiers?”

Dean felt a sadness spreading through him like frost creeping over delicate foliage and something in him shrivelled and died.

He’d used a spell on Cas that had been created to enslave him. To turn him in to a killing machine. Humans had used that spell to rip Cas’ brothers and sisters from heaven and trap them on earth, forcing them to fight in their petty human wars. Forcing them to slaughter the very creations their Father had ordered them to protect.

They were trying to get Cas to believe he was more than whatever tool he could shape himself in to and Dean had gone and chained him down with a spell designed to _use_ him as a weapon.

Dean swallowed around the tightness in his throat as Sam continued. “That must be why he’s reacting the way he is whenever we say something that sounds like an order. I mean, like I said before, in the past I noticed that if one of us says something that he _perceives_ as an order, he always seemed to kind of struggle with…something. Like he consciously has to think about what he wants to do instead of just…doing it. Almost like he’s fighting the impulse to immediately comply and has to actually think for a second to –“

“Yeah, I was also there for the conversation you and I had,” Dean made a real effort not to bark. But that particular revelation was still fresh and raw in his mind. Realising, years later, how barking orders at Cas was so very, very different from barking orders at everyone else had been unpleasantly enlightening.

He took a sip of his tea, just in case he was one mouthful shy of it working. 

“I’m just saying that it’s definitely more noticeable now and it makes sense that they’d work that in to the binding. The obedience part is already hardwired into angels, maybe they just amplified it. And the praying thing too.”

“Now that I think about it,” Dean roughly cleared his throat, forcing his brain to be helpful. “The only time he seems actually incapable of disobeying an order is when the sigil is healed over. The sigil smothers his grace, which makes the binding back off, and he can…exercise free will. As soon as the sigil heals...”

“He’s a slave again,” Sam finished with a sigh. But then he straightened suddenly. “Oh…but angels are already slaves in a way, aren’t they? They just all have the same master: God. What if the Vikings meant to transfer that title to the spell-caster?”

Dean pursed his lips at his tea mug. “So the spell caster becomes the captured angel’s new God?” He shook his head, “Jesus Christ…”

Stealing angels must have been no different then stealing food, horses, weapons, or anything else the Vikings could use. They had seen something shiny and they had taken it for themselves. Then taken it a step further, because apparently it wasn’t enough to steal a living creature; they had to force it to submit to them and kill for them as well.

A sudden, terrible, thought occurred to him then. He thought back to what had transpired in the library earlier, how Cas had looked up at them with fear and distrust and no small amount of anger but, more importantly, how he had refused to give them his blade to let them cut the sigil. 

“That’s what happened when he froze up earlier,” Dean said woodenly. “The spell was forcing him to do what we said.”

Sam blanched. “I told him to let us help him…and he didn't let us.”

“So the spell crushed him so he couldn’t move. He didn’t snap out of it until I ordered him to look at me.” Dean bit the inside of his cheek so he could blame the prickling in his eyes on the pain.

For a few moments, neither of them said anything and Dean prayed the silence would last into tomorrow. He couldn’t take any more gut-wrenching revelations tonight. There wasn’t enough peppermint tea in the world.

Alas.

Sam scrubbed at his face, as if trying to wash away the fatigue and all the emotions likely clogging his head. “We’ll have to be more careful how we word things when we talk to him, and make sure he doesn’t leave the bunker. That spell just took away his ability to say ‘no’ to anyone.”

Bile rose in the back of Dean’s throat at the images Sam’s words invoked. 

He shoved those thoughts deep, deep down. Cas was _safe_ , he was in the bunker where Dean could protect him and Dean would make sure he _stayed_ protected until they had found a way to give him back the free will he had worked so hard for. 

“I don’t understand the praying though,” Sam continued with an air of wanting to move on. There was a thoughtful frown on his face. “Maybe they wanted to make it so the captured angel worshipped _them_ instead of Chuck and they couldn’t quite manage it but it still ramped up their drive to worship?”

“Yeah, maybe…”

“…you ok?”

Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling overwhelmed and saying as much. “This is just…a lot a heavy shit. And I just don’t know where to start. This Biblical stuff keeps getting crazier and crazier…not to mention more depressing. No wonder angels are so messed up.”

The silence from Sam changed into something much heavier, then, and Dean looked across the table.

Hesitantly, Sam spoke. “I wasn’t just trying to get a rise out of Cas when I suggested calling Crowley for help earlier.”

Dean sighed the long-suffering sigh of a man who was getting tired of their ridiculous lives.

“We’re out of books, we’re out of ideas, and Cas is literally too traumatized by the last ten years of his life to understand what is going on inside his head, much less communicate it to us in a way we’ll understand. So, if you can’t get the information from the target, who’s the next best source of intel?”

Dean’s lips thinned. “The target’s enemy.”

* * *

Their relationship with Crowley was…weird and uncomfortable. To say the least. Dean didn’t like to think about it too much. 

Was the King of Hell still their enemy? Yes. 

Was the King of Hell also in his contacts list? Yes. 

Did a picture of he two of them wearing cowboy hats pop up with the caller ID when the King of Hell called him? Also yes.

Did he kinda, sorta, trust the guy a little bit? Yes…but also no.

It made his head hurt, so he just jabbed his thumb into the little image of Crowley’s stupid face and brought the phone to his ear.

This was for Cas, and he would do anything for Cas. And Dean was almost sure that Crowley could be convinced to do anything for Cas too, if they could find the right leverage.

“ _Squirrel. Long time no chat. I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me_.”

Dean rolled his eyes at Sam as he began to pace back and forth in front of his brother, where he stood half sitting on the edge of a library table. He looked as tense as Dean felt.

“Hey, Crowley…uh…how’s it going?” Dean winced, wanting to punch himself.

“How’s it going?” Sam mocked from the sidelines.

He flailed his hand in Sam’s direction.

“ _You know, Squirrel, I’m starting to notice a trend here. You only ever call when you want something. It hurts my feelings.”_

“Just –“ Dean bit his tongue before he snapped at the posh accent. He took a deep breath, literally able to _hear_ the smirk coming through the line. “We need your help.”

“ _My help? What could you possibly need from little old me_?”

Another deep breath. 

“Cas is in trouble. Big trouble.”

“ _Are you calling from the bunker or from 2011?_ ”

“That’s not funny.”

“ _It’s a little bit funny_.”

“Dammit, Crowley, will you help us or not?”

“ _Well, not if you’re going to talk to me like that! Say please_.”

Dean bit his lip hard enough to break the skin and only managed to pry his teeth apart just enough to snarl, “ _Please?!_ ” into his cell phone.

“ _Alright, you’ve charmed me in to it. Be there in a flash. Make sure you’re at the door to let me in, it’s raining and this suit is too expensive to ruin.”_

_Click_

Dean tossed his phone on to the table with a fair measure of control. Talking to Crowley always made his blood pressure skyrocket. Less because he was a _very_ powerful demon and more because he was such an annoying little prick.

“For Cas,” Sam muttered behind him.

Dean released his breath, slow and controlled, to the count of four, just like the internet had told him to.

Neither of them mentioned the fact that Crowley was going to want something in return for his help and it was probably going to be something evil.

As if the mere thought was enough to summon the man, there came three smart raps on the large iron door at the top of the staircase. Dean tossed his head in the direction of the door and began to pace, as Sam climbed the steps with heavy footfalls, Dean glanced in the direction of the dormitories, where he tried to convince himself that Cas was sleeping instead of full-blown unconscious.

Only then did it occur to him that they had just invited, not only a demon, but the _King of Hell_ , into their home, mere hours after Cas had admitted to them that he felt exposed, vulnerable, and _scared_.

Dean actually had to swallow down peppermint flavoured bile as it surged up his throat, stomach heaving as he spun to tell Sam to keep the door shut. But Crowley was already walking down the stairs in front of his brother and Dean wiped a clammy hand down his face. 

He’d betrayed Cas _again_. Put him in danger _again_. Disregarded his needs _again_. How were they failing at this over and over? Why was it so hard to be good to each other?

Crowley was smirking – though that might just be permanent by now – when he stopped in front of Dean.

“My, my, you’re very pale, Dean. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Crowley chuckled. He glanced around the war room disinterestedly, but was clearly taking everything in despite having been there before. 

More times than was normal.

Sam came and stood next to Dean, looking far calmer than Dean felt. 

“So, where is the little dove?” Crowley asked, looking between the brothers. “Who’s net has he gotten himself tangled in this time?”

Dean felt his hackles rise at the implication. Cas wasn’t a delicate little dove with delicate little wings. He was a brick shithouse that could weather any storm heaven, hell, or anything in between could throw at him. He was a soldier. He was a _warrior_. And he would get through this.

He clenched his teeth and his fists until his nails bit in to his palms. 

“He’s resting and you won’t be talking to him. We called you to see if you had any information on a spell.”

He motioned for Crowley to follow him to the library, Sam following behind to make sure Crowley didn’t do anything…Crowley-like.

He plucked the book with the binding spell from the sea of papers and other books littering the table and handed it to Crowley. As the demon read further and further down the page, his bushy but impeccably groomed eyebrows climbed higher and higher.

When he finished, he tossed the book back down on the table, still open, and looked between the brothers with a small smile. 

“Well, if you think it was one of mine that put this especially nasty whammy on your angel, you’re wrong. We don’t use this particular brand of…shackle.” He glanced at the book with distaste. “The Vikings were barbarians. I mean, they knew how to throw a damn good party, but beyond that,” Crowley shook his head. “No class. No fineness. No desire for the finer…arts.” He smirked again. “They just like to smash and burn and pillage. Boring-“

“We don’t need to know who put it on him, we want to know how to take it _off_ ,” Sam interrupted before Dean could.

Honestly, Crowley would prattle on forever if someone didn’t stop him.

“Have you heard of it? Know anything about it? At all?” Dean prompted. He glanced towards the dormitory again, a movement Crowley followed closely.

“You… _don’t_ want to know who barbarically enslaved your angel?” Crowley looked between them and, judging by the budding look of disbelieving realisation, he could see through their poor attempts to hide their guilt.

“My god… _you_ bound him?” Crowley looked unsettlingly appalled but it was hard to tell if that was just a show to make them feel even worse about it than they already did.

“It’s…it’s a long story, just,” Dean growled, reining in his temper once more when he saw Sam shake his head from the corner of his eye. “Can you tell us anything about it?” He ground out as politely as he could manage.

Crowley rolled his eyes, “You three are the most dysfunctional family I’ve ever met outside my own.” He cast a perturbed look between the brothers and pulled up a chair, starting to read over the passage again.

His finger traced the Old Norse words as he read aloud.

“ _Bind this heavenly light_

_Bind this heavenly mind_

_Bind this heavenly power_

_And place the Divine in my hand_ ”

Crowley stared up at them, nonplused. “Basically, you slapped a collar on him. A collar lined with rusty nails because neither you nor these idiot Vikings knew what they were doing. And while I’ve never _personally_ seen this particular binding in action before, I’ve heard first hand accounts. The two or three times it was used was hilariously unsuccessful.” He grinned, “They _hoped_ they’d be able to order the angels to do the heavy lifting in battle. Smite their enemies, burn villages with a blink, etc, etc. And they _sort of_ succeeded, but as you well know, spell work of this level is a tricky business. You have to be _very_ careful with your chosen words _and_ the intent behind them. Moose, pour us a scotch, would you? The good stuff, I know you have it because I left it here last time so I wouldn’t have to drink that swill you two keep lying around.”

Crowley flashed them a grin. Sam scowled but went to the kitchen and returned a moment later with three glasses and a very old looking bottle. Apparently, this discussion was heavy enough to break the no booze rule. 

Dean wasn’t complaining.

Once Sam and Dean sat down and they’d all taken generous sips, Crowley continued, leaning back in his chair as if right at home.

“Anyway, rumor has it they managed to get the actual _binding_ part of their spell, really, _really_ effective. To the point where it instantly crushed the first angel violently enough that it drove the poor thing mad and it burst – quite literally – from its vessel in an attempt to escape. Then it, of course, burned the eyes out of every person within a fifty-mile radius.” He paused for another drink, smacking his lips appreciatively.

Dean winced, looking into his glass, “Cas said it feels like he’s being crushed.”

“Indeed…well, after _that_ little incident they decided they needed to tweak the formula a bit and bravely, stupidly, tried again. Their second go went a little better. Or so I was told. They managed to summon and bind the angel without _too_ many casualties. They smashed their way through a few battles with their feathered hammer and after that there was only the rumor of one more attempt to tweak the spell. As far as I know, they more or less left it at the version you have here. So tell me, is your pet angel being even more obedient the usual?”

“Crowley,” Dean growled in warning, feeling the scotch roll in his stomach.

Needless to say, it was a sore topic and he didn’t want Crowley knowing any more about the situation than was absolutely necessary.

“Alright well, at least that confirms what we guessed earlier.” Sam was slumped back in his chair and it made Dean sit up straighter.

Since when had they gotten comfortable enough to slouch around the table while drinking with the King of Hell?

Sam continued, “How did the captive angels use their grace to take out opposing armies, though? Cas nearly tore through his own chest with his bare hands because he can’t touch it or reach it or…however it is that angels use their grace. It _immediately_ drove him into a frenzy.”

Dean tossed back the rest of his drink.

Crowley sighed, “I assume the spell caster simply ordered them to use their grace to wipe out their enemies, which would mean that was the _only_ thing they could use their grace for. As for it sending poor little Cas into a frenzy, well...there really is no comparison that will make you understand just what grace is as a human, the best I can do is this: Grace is an angel’s lifeforce. Imagine, if you can, a scenario where someone has wrapped up your lungs with burning hot, rusty, barbed-wire – in this case, our binding spell – and tied it so tight you can’t breathe. Now, an angel not being able to access their grace doesn’t _kill_ them, but it’s just as painful and maddening as a human not being able to breathe. The real dirty part is, instead of dying, for an angel, the agony goes on and on. Imagine not being able to breathe but never dying.”

Dean briefly wondered why Crowley knew so much about binding spells for angels but decided he didn’t want to know.

“So then why doesn’t the release spell work?” Sam asked, making a vague gesture towards the book.

Crowley glanced down at it, presumably looking at the two lines beneath the spell. “What, this? That’s not a release spell. It loosely translates to ‘End this heavenly light’. I assume it was a half-assed attempt to kill the angel once they were done with it, since I doubt they would have known about angel blades let alone had access to any. That being said, I’ve never heard anything about them successfully disposing of an angel. It was always the other way around.”

Dean’s stomach surged into his throat. 

Crowley chuckled, “Let me guess, you slapped this binding on your angel without realizing what it would do and then desperately repeated a spell meant to kill him over and over to try and release him.”

Dean rested his elbows on his knees and took a few steadying breaths. 

He’d repeated that phrase in Old Norse nearly ten times while Cas was convulsing on the floor.

He tried to rein in a sudden flash of anger towards Sam, who had seemed so confident that he had translated both the words and the meaning accurately. He could not blame Sam. They had both done this. They were both trying to fix it. Cas had been about to kill them all, they hadn’t had a choice. 

When he straightened himself again, Sam’s eyes were glassy and downcast and Dean’s anger drained away.

“We’ll fix it, Sam.”

Sam nodded.

Crowley cleared his throat, dragging both brothers’ attention back to him. “If you don’t mind my asking, why the hell did you bind him in the first place?”

Given that they were asking the guy for help, Dean supposed he deserved a little bit of back story. If only as a gesture of goodwill.

“He, uh…he was gonna bring the bunker down. Looked like he might have brought a good chunk of the state with it. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t even see us standing there till it was too late. He tried to stop but…” Dean shrugged. “We couldn’t even get close to him. It felt like my skin was gonna melt off if I got any closer.”

He would have tried anything else first. He would have tackled Cas to the floor, tried to snap him out of it with a slap to the face… _something_. But the searing heat whipping around the room in a rage had kept him from getting close enough to do anything like that. It had felt like he was standing in a sandstorm in the hottest desert. It had peeled the paint off the walls and for a few days after, both Sam and Dean’s skin had been raw and pink, like they’d gotten a bad sunburn.

Then Cas’ grace had flooded his eyes and all they could see of him was a vaguely human-shaped cluster of light. All they could hear was a savage battle-cry that sounded like galaxies colliding. It had left both of their ears ringing for hours and hours after it was over.

The worst part was the moment Cas realized where he was and what had happened. The roar of imminent annihilation had stopped, but, in its place, something terrifying and indescribable had replaced it. It had sounded like the ringing of a thousand brass instruments all working together to blast a complicated harmony of noise; it had been simultaneously beautiful and bone chilling.

It had been a warning, Dean was sure of it, and if light could sing with all the colors of a prism, it might come close to describing what Dean was convinced had been Castiel’s real voice. 

His fight or flight had kicked in then, and he’d used the binding spell as a last resort.

“So,” Crowley said, pulling Dean back to the present, “knowing that a lot of spell work relies on the _intention_ behind the spell…I’m sure you can imagine what your little lizard brain’s intention was in that moment.” Crowley calmly prompted him. “That, more than second hand stories, will tell you how the binding is likely affecting your angel.”

Dean closed his eyes, thinking back to the terror he’d felt in that moment. “I just wanted to…stop him. To get him under control.”

“And if I know Feathers like I think I do, he’ll be fighting that tooth and claw all the way to the bitter end.” He stared Dean down silently for a moment. “It will get worse. The longer he fights it the harder the spell will work to force him into submission. And he _will_ submit eventually. The spell is shockingly effective despite its crudeness.”

Dean grimaced, not caring for Crowley’s choice of words. A spell of that design, it was hard not to picture the ways it had likely been abused. He tried to convince himself that, at the very least, Vikings had been known for their honor. He tried to convince himself they wouldn’t have done anything like _that_ to a holy creature.

No one said anything for several long moments. 

Crowley twirled his glass on the table. “What else is wrong with him?”

The brothers shared a look and, despite the fact that Dean wanted to tell the guy to mind his business…he didn’t.

“We’re not…entirely sure. He uh, he won’t tell us. Or doesn’t know how to tell us.”

Crowley was looking from one brother to the other through narrowed eyes, “You two idiots have been BFFs with an angel for what now? Ten years? And you don’t know a damn thing about the species, do you?” He shook his head.

“It’s not for lack of trying!” Dean exclaimed defensively.

Crowley leveled his most unimpressed stare upon him. 

“We’re trying,” Sam amended. Because they really hadn’t tried before now.

“Which seems to be working grand.” Crowley sighed, “Alright, _fine_. I happen to have under my employ, someone who speaks Old Norse fluently _and_ it’s actually his first language. He _was_ a Viking, back in the day. Though, I suppose he’s a sort of Viking now,” Crowley chuckled, scratching his beard absently. “Anyway, he may be able to help you create a counter spell to unclip those wings. Of course,” here a slow grin spread across his face, “It’ll cost you.”

“What do you want?” Dean asked, uninterested in playing games. The clock on the wall was ticking louder and louder, reminding him that at any moment Cas could come walking into the library.

Crowley drained the rest of his own drink and then looked up, his dark eyes glittering like glass shards.

“Just a few feathers.”

Dean frowned, not understanding, until he looked over at Sam and saw his brother’s face torn between outrage and anger. 

Then it clicked.

He stood, chair skittering across the floor, towering over Crowley, who’s hands flew up in a sign of peace. 

“Alright, alright, I’ll sweeten the deal! I’ll send over the Viking _and_ give you the number of an angel expert in exchange for just three _, measly_ , little, feathers.”

“We’re not giving you Cas’ feathers like he’s some kind of…” Sam cut himself off, looking angrier than Dean had seen him in a long time. He was visibly holding himself in check, but only just, teeth half bared in a snarl like a wolf protecting its cub.

It would have been heart-warming in a less awful situation.

“Now just listen,” Crowley said soothingly. “My angel guy has dedicated his considerably long life to studying angels. He’s written books on them, spent time with them. Even rehabilitated a few…which sounds like a skill you may be particularly interested in. He’s,” here he paused to roll his eyes, “ _A good man_. Incredibly intelligent and weirdly fascinated by religion, but he took a shinning to angels in particular. And I bet, after all this time, he’s the only one who could teach you how to effectively communicate with the winged morons.”

Dean was frozen by his chair. He looked at Sam, who looked at him.

“What do you want the feathers for?” Sam asked coolly.

For a moment, Crowley stared at him, as if weighing the pros and cons of actually telling them, before grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “If I told you, you wouldn’t give them to me.”

Before Dean could respond, Sam barked, “No deal,” and turned on his heal towards the dormitories.

Dean hesitated, watching his brother leave, before following. Sam didn’t get to make that kind of call on his own.

“Alright then,” Crowley called after them. “I’m sure you won’t have any problem asking your angel what he needs to heal up and he’ll have no problem telling you. It’s not as if angels communicate with each other entirely non-verbally and using _words_ to communicate is something Castiel had probably only done a handful of times before he met you two.”

The brothers both turned slowly. Crowley was standing next to his empty glass, readjusting his tie and suit jacket, before looking up and offering them a polite smile.

“How do we know that isn’t a lie?” Dean demanded.

But Crowley merely leveled a deadpanned stare upon them. “You’ve known Castiel for ten years and you think I’m lying about how difficult it is to talk to angels?”

“…fair enough. Then how do you know that?”

Crowley smiled sweetly. “Know thine enemy, dear. So…do we have a deal?”

The brothers shared another silent look and then Sam tossed his head in the direction of the kitchen, so Dean told Crowley to pour himself another drink while they went and talked things over.

“I don’t like this,” Sam announced, folding his arms across his chest and looking even more uncomfortable than he had in Crowley’s presence.

Dean sank in to a chair at the table, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Well, I don’t either, but…” he shrugged. What else were they supposed to do? “What if what Crowley said is true? What if we’ll never be able to really get through to him? What if that binding is slowly driving him crazy? What then? You saw what happened to him earlier! He just froze up like a marble statue until I _ordered_ him to move. And how much time do we even have? He was already pretty messed up before I put that fucking spell on him, I don’t think he’s got much fight left in him, Sam!”

Sam licked his lips, still looking pale with an emotion Dean couldn’t quite place. He licked his lips again, seeming to struggle getting his next words out, like just saying them was nearly making him gag.

“Dean…ripping out an angel’s feathers? And giving them over to a _demon_? We can’t… _I_ can’t… _do_ that to Cas.”

Sam looked like he was going to be sick and Dean felt his own stomach drop heavily in response. Sam was right. There was something very wrong about the thought. Something dirty and vile about the idea of taking something from a creature made of light and giving it to one made a darkness.

“Yeah…yeah, you’re right. That’s gotta be some serious level of blasphemy or something.” Dean sighed, feeling like their only hope for getting Cas help was slipping through their fingers already.

“More like sacrilege,” Sam corrected, swallowing. “It would be an absolute violation of a…a sacred being. It’d be no different then what Metatron did to him, Dean.”

 _That_ had tears needling at Dean’s eyes and he gruffly cleared his throat, willing his stomach to just _chill_ already. Sam was right.

But what else were they supposed to do?

“Maybe we should ask him,” Dean suggested half-heartedly. “Maybe – maybe feathers are to angels what hair is to humans. Maybe its no big deal.”

Sam stared at him. “I know you don’t actually believe that. After we saw how getting his wings restored _broke_ him? The way he obviously finds comfort in them? The way he uses them as a shield when he’s scared? Dean –“

“I know! I _know_ , Sam, but what are our other options here?! What if this spell drives him insane?! What if it kills him?!”

Sam shook his head, looking just as helpless as Dean felt. “We _have_ to talk to Cas. We can’t keep making life or death decisions for each other!”

“But –“ Dean started without knowing what he wanted to say. This didn’t feel like it should even _be_ a choice. They couldn’t let Cas die. And certainly not like this. Suffering, in agony, while the free will he’d worked so hard to save and understand and use was slowly peeled away?

 _What_ _choice_?! he wanted to yell. If it came to trusting Crowley or letting Cas suffer and die, then there was _only_ one choice. 

Dean had lived without Cas, he knew what that was like. And now, after everything, after starting down the path to heal their little family, losing him wasn’t an option.

It just wasn’t.

* * *

* * *

Like?????? Look at this! So beautiful!


End file.
